Version-controlled recipes that scale and cost automatically.

Version-controlled recipes

Editing an approved recipe doesn't touch the approved row — it forks a new draft. The old version stays exactly as it was approved, so every batch you've ever run still points at the recipe that actually built it. Approve the fork and OakNex archives the prior version automatically; the full chain stays queryable as version history.

Approval also protects the family as a whole: OakNex checks a recipe's ingredient graph for cycles before it can go live, so a sub-recipe can never end up quietly depending on the parent that uses it.

Scale to batch — including liquid batches

Scale a recipe to any batch size and every ingredient quantity scales with it. For liquid products — kombucha, kefir, any fermented drink — mark the recipe as a liquid batch and scale by litres instead of bottle count: brew 500 litres, and OakNex works out ingredients from volume, then splits the batch into whatever bottle sizes actually came off the line at completion, allocating joint cost by the litres each size produced. Leftover liquid and any bottling waste are logged against the batch.

That matters for anyone bottling the same brew into more than one size — a run that fills mostly 330ml with some 750ml overflow costs out by actual litres delivered to each, not an even split by bottle count that quietly overcosts your small format.

Multi-level & phantom BOMs

Build recipes on top of recipes: a sub-recipe (a base syrup, a starter culture) can be marked phantom so it explodes straight into its raw materials on a parent's work order instead of requiring its own separate build step. Multi-level BOMs go as deep as your process needs, and OakNex checks for reference cycles at approval so a recipe can never end up depending on itself.

Marking a sub-recipe phantom is a modeling choice, not a workaround — it means "this is a formula step, not a separate production run," so your BOM structure matches how the batch is actually made.

Per-output packaging

Bottle, label and cap are recipe-level facts, not afterthoughts — declare which packaging SKU goes with which output, and OakNex snapshots that onto the work order and consumes it automatically at completion. Change your label supplier and the change flows through the next time you approve the recipe, without touching every work order that's already planned against the old one.

Routing steps with workstations and timing

Add routing to a recipe — the ordered steps a batch actually goes through, each with a workstation, setup and run minutes, and dependencies on the steps before it. OakNex computes the critical path from that graph, so a work order shows the real minimum time to finish, not a guess. See production planning for how that routing turns into a schedule your team can run.

You can bind a specific ingredient to a specific routing step too — the syrup addition happens at the mix step, the label goes on at the bottling step — so a work order knows not just what it needs, but when.