🧠 What is Processing Loss?
Processing loss is the amount of material that cannot be accounted for after production, calculated automatically unless overridden. Understanding how this is calculated helps ensure your inventory and compliance records are accurate.
⚙️ System Calculation (Default)
By default, processing loss is calculated as:
Processing Loss = Inputs – Outputs – Destruction
Inputs: Immediately subtracted from inventory and counted as a potential loss.
Outputs: Added to inventory and reduces loss.
Destruction: Doesn’t affect inventory but reduces processing loss.
If no manual loss is entered, this formula is applied automatically.
🧮 Unit-Based Processing Loss Calculation
Processing loss and Remaining value respect equivalent units inside a Work Order.
When a product has multiple inventory units, loss is calculated separately for each unit group and shown everywhere you’d expect—the Work Order summary & PDF, Batch event log, and Batch PDF.
This means that if you have an equivalent unit set up for a specific inventory item, the system will account for each equivalent unit when the processing loss or remaining value is calculated.
For example, if you expect your grams processing loss value to be 0, but instead you see 230ea in processing loss, this doesn’t mean you have 230g in processing loss. You're just seeing the difference between the input and output in the equivalent unit (ea). In this case, grams has a 0 loss bucket, and only eaches had a non-zero difference.
Let's see how it works now!
📐 Example 1: Single Unit (Grams)
Let’s say we’re processing 1,000g of cannabis trim into pre-rolls.
Input: 1,000g of bulk material
Output: 800g of packaged pre-rolls
Destruction: 100g of waste due to trimming
Loss = 1,000g – 800g – 100g = 100g loss
📝 In this case, all inputs and outputs are in the same unit (g), so we have a single unit bucket. The loss is clearly calculated and shown in grams.
📐 Example 2: Mixed Units (Grams & Each)
Now let’s say you're packaging 270g of pre-rolls into 108 units of packaged pre-rolls, 2.5g each.
When looking at a Work Order where you have inventory products with equivalent units, you'll need to be mindful of what your equivalency is for each of these products.
For this specific example, you have 2 products:
- A single “ea” is one package of five 0.5 g pre‑rolls, so 1 ea = 2.5 g.
- That means 1 g is roughly 0.4 ea because each 0.5 g pre‑roll is one‑fifth of the package.
- Pre-Rolls (Bulk) (0.5g) where display unit is "g" and ea = 0.5g
Input: You entered 270g of Pre-Rolls (Bulk) (0.5g). This product has a unit equivalency of 1 ea = 0.5g, so:
270g ÷ 0.5g per ea = 540 ea input
Output: You output 108 ea of Pre-Rolls (Packaged) (5 x 0.5g). This product has a unit equivalency of 1 ea = 2.5g, so:
108 x 2.5 = 270gDestruction: None
Loss Buckets:
Grams (g): 270g input – 270g (108 units of 2.5 each = 270g) output = 0g loss
Eaches (ea): 540ea input – 108ea output = 432ea loss
📝 In this case, you might have expected no loss because your gram output balances your gram input, but you’ll still see a loss in the "ea" bucket because of the difference in equivalent units. This is normal behaviour when using unit equivalency.
⚠️ Unit Equivalency & Setup
Unit equivalency setup matters. If your units are not properly defined, the system won’t know how to relate them and might present skewed data in relation to what you were expecting to see.
✅ Always double-check the unit equivalency settings for each product to ensure accurate loss buckets and intuitive results.
❓Need Help?
Please don't hesitate to reach out to our Support Team with any further questions or should you require assistance - we're always happy to help!