# Reading the Seasonal Usage Report

Every shop has a rhythm. Iced drinks climb, hot chocolate disappears, and the oat milk order that was right in February is wrong by June. Seasonal Usage lays this year over last so you can see the shift starting instead of noticing it a month late.

## Open the report

Go to **Reports > Business Reports > Seasonal Usage**.

![The Seasonal Usage report with its ingredient picker and monthly and weekly views](https://ikhejtbmenrxkoctpysb.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/kb-screenshots/kb/seasonal-usage-report/2/5a69b0c3/1-seasonal-usage-report-report.png)

Two controls do the work:

- **Ingredient** chooses what you are looking at. The report starts empty and waits for your pick.
- **Monthly** and **Weekly** set the grain. Monthly for planning a season, weekly for pinning down when a change actually starts.

## Reading a year over a year

With an ingredient selected, you get its usage across years on one chart. What you are looking for is not the peak, it is the slope before it.

- **Where the lines separate** is when the season turns. That date, minus your supplier's lead time, is when your order should change.
- **A gap between years at the same point in the calendar** is growth or decline you can act on. Twenty percent more cold brew concentrate in May than last May is a PAR that should already have moved.
- **A spike in one year only** is usually an event rather than a season. Worth remembering before you build it into a PAR.

> \[!TIP]
> Run this on your seasonal drivers a few weeks before you expect the turn: milk alternatives, cold brew, syrups, and cups. Those are where being a fortnight late costs you either sales or a walk-in full of stock.

## Turning it into an order

The report tells you the shape; PARs do the work. When a line shows a reliable seasonal lift, raise the PAR on that ingredient under **Recipes & Ingredients > Ingredients > Ingredients** before the season arrives, and your order suggestions carry the change for you.

> \[!NOTE]
> Usage comes from your ledger, so a year with gaps in it, before your recipes were complete for instance, will read low. Compare like with like.

## What you should see

Two lines with the same shape and a readable gap between them, and a short list of ingredients whose PARs should move before the season does.

***Account Level:** All*