In melba, the food cost, the allergens, the nutrition facts and the INCO composition are not typed in by hand: they are calculated from your ingredients. When an ingredient moves, everything that depends on it has to be recomputed.

The “Recompute” badge

When you see a Recompute badge next to the name of an article or a recipe, it means its values are being refreshed in the background.

This is not an error. The figures shown in the meantime are simply the previous ones — never partial or wrong values. The badge disappears on its own as soon as the calculation is done.

What triggers a recompute

• You change an ingredient in a recipe (adding, removing, changing a quantity).
• A supplier price changes, either by hand or through a catalogue import.
• You change a product's weight or density.
• You change an ingredient's allergens or nutrition facts.

Why it can take a moment

Because the recompute does not stop at the product you touched: it works its way up the whole chain.

A concrete example. You change the price of a bag of flour. melba then recomputes:

1. the shortcrust pastry that uses that flour;
2. the apple tart that uses that pastry;
3. the dessert platter that contains that tart;

…and so on, all the way up your tree.

On a small menu this is instant. On a large catalogue with many nested sub-recipes, a single price change can touch several thousand recipes. In that case melba would rather hand control back to you straight away and do the work in the background, instead of leaving you on a loading screen.

Finding what is still running

In the Articles and Recipes lists, the Up to date filter lets you isolate what is still being recomputed in one click. Handy after a large price import: you see at a glance what is left, and the list empties as the work progresses.

Good to know

• It has become much faster. We reworked this calculation engine in July 2026: allergens now propagate around six times faster than before, with costs and nutrition facts also gaining.
• You can keep working. Nothing stops you from editing other records while a recompute is running.
• If a badge stays stuck for a very long time (well beyond a few minutes), get in touch: that points to an incident, not to normal behaviour.