Get oriented in Bohari IMS: sign in, understand what your role lets you see, and find your way to stock, procurement, compliance and the AI assistant.
Overview
Bohari IMS tracks stock through one continuous loop: what you buy (procurement), what you hold (stock on hand), what you count and lose (stocktakes and waste), what a recipe says you should have used (recipes and sales), and what actually happened (variance). Everything in the app hangs off that loop. This guide gets you from your first sign-in to finding your way around it; it doesn't try to walk through every screen.
Step 1: Get your account
There is no self-service sign-up. Companies on Bohari IMS are set up by a platform administrator, who creates your company, chooses its currency and location settings, and provisions the first admin login. From there, every other person is invited from inside the app, under Company Settings → Users.
That's why the login screen reads "Don't have an account? Contact your administrator" rather than offering a way to register. If you're waiting on access, that's who to ask.
Step 2: Sign in
Go to /login and enter your email and password.
A few things you may run into on this screen:
- Remember me keeps your session active across browser restarts. Leave it unchecked on shared computers.
- Sign in with Google and Sign in with Apple are available when your administrator has connected those options. They only work for accounts that already exist; a social provider can't create one for you.
- Two-factor authentication. If your platform requires 2FA and you haven't set it up yet, you're sent to a setup screen to scan a QR code with an authenticator app and confirm a 6-digit code. You'll also get one-time backup codes. Save them somewhere safe. After that, each login asks for a 6-digit code (or an 8-character backup code).
- Forgot your password? Use the "Forgot?" link. You'll get an email with a reset link that's valid for 30 minutes.
Once you're in, you land on the dashboard.
Step 3: Know your role
What you can see and do is decided by permissions, bundled into a role. New companies start with a set of built-in roles shaped around how stock actually moves through a restaurant, bistro or café:
| Role | Built for |
|---|---|
| Admin | Full administration of the company account |
| Finance / Accounts | Approving supplier invoices, recording settlements, cost visibility |
| Procurement Officer | Suppliers, the item master, purchase orders and requisitions |
| Outlet Manager | Full control of one outlet: stock, accepting counts and waste, recipes, receiving, purchasing, bar shifts and bottle sign-outs |
| Storekeeper | Receiving and empties collections, issuing stock, requisitions, cash purchases, physical counting, waste, bottle sign-outs |
| Chef / Kitchen Lead | Recipes, kitchen issues, counting the kitchen, waste, market-run cash purchases |
| Bar Manager | Bar stock, counting the bar, shifts and handovers, bottle sign-outs, empties, waste, view-only recipes |
| Auditor | Read-only visibility across the board, for checking the work |
| Stock-taker | Counting only. Deliberately cannot see stock levels before a count |
The last two deserve a second look. Auditor and Stock-taker are read-heavy roles built so counting and reviewing stay independent of the people who move stock day to day. A Stock-taker in particular is scoped so tightly that they can't see what the system expects a shelf to hold before they count it. That's what makes a count meaningful evidence rather than a guess dressed up as one.
See Roles & Permissions for the full breakdown of what each role holds and how to customize them.
Step 4: Find your way around
The sidebar is organized by what you do, grouped into sections. Which sections and items you see depends on your role's permissions and which modules your company has licensed, so your sidebar may well be shorter than this:
Inventory Live stock on hand, movements, items and transfers
Stocktakes Blind physical counts and waste notes
Recipes & Menu Recipes, menu mapping, POS setup and sales imports
Bar Suite Bar shifts and bottle service
Procurement Invoice queue, purchase orders, requisitions,
cash purchases, container balances, empties
returns and suppliers
Compliance Documents and the compliance calendar
Reports & Export Variance and inventory reports, data export
AI Assistant AI chat, knowledge base, tools, audit and settings
Company Settings Users, roles, billing, webhooks, integrations
Step 5: The everyday flow
Two loops run side by side.
Procurement → stock. A purchase order is raised and approved (the approval chain scales with the order's value). The supplier delivers, and whoever's at the bay records what actually arrived on their phone. The supplier's invoice is entered and matched against the order and the delivery. Quantities and prices are checked automatically, and anything that doesn't line up is flagged for a decision. Cash and market buys skip the order entirely: they post to stock the moment they're captured, and someone other than the buyer reviews them afterwards.
Stock → variance. Stock on hand is a live read of the ledger. Stocktakes count it physically. Counters work blind, without seeing what the system expects, so a count is independent evidence rather than a confirmation of a number they've already seen. Waste records what got thrown out, with approval required above a value threshold. Recipes describe what a sale should consume, sales imports bring in what was actually sold, and menu mapping ties the two together. Sales arrive three ways: a CSV export, hand entry from the Z-report, or a Micros item-sales PDF. The PDF import re-adds every family and till subtotal and refuses the whole file unless they reconcile with its own printed totals. POS buttons are matched to menu items by their PLU number, so a renamed button keeps its identity. Stock also moves between outlets as transfers, counted at both ends, and a free issue from a supplier has its own guarded door so promotional stock never launders a loss. Variance puts theoretical usage next to counted stock and shows you where the two disagree. When a product changes - a new brand, a new pack size, or a unit of measure that was wrong from the start - the item is never renamed into the new one. Bohari creates a linked successor and runs the old item down, so every order, delivery and count you already filed still means what it said when you filed it. See Replacing & Retiring Items.
Bars run the same loop on a shorter clock. A bar shift is the interval between two counts at one bar with a person's name on it, and its page is the variance for that stretch of the night, in bottles, tots and shillings. Sealed bottles carried to a table are recorded as custody rather than as stock leaving, and a shift cannot close until every one of them is accounted for. None of that is a new way to move stock: the ledger still only changes through deliveries, issues, waste and accepted counts.
Where to go next
- Roles & Permissions: the full permission model and what each built-in role can do.
- Replacing & Retiring Items: stopping an item safely, linked successors, and correcting a measurement after trading has started.
- What You Can Ask: how the AI assistant can help, and where it can't yet.
- Security Overview: authentication, encryption and tenant isolation, for when your own security team asks.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the login page tell me to contact my administrator? Because that's how every account on Bohari IMS gets created. There's no self-registration. Your platform administrator sets up your company and its first admin login; everyone after that is invited from Company Settings → Users.
I can't see a page I expect to have access to. Why? Either your role doesn't hold the permission that page requires, or the module it belongs to isn't licensed for your company. Ask an Admin to check your role under Company Settings → Roles & Permissions.
I set up two-factor authentication. Can I turn it off? You can disable it from your profile by confirming a current 6-digit code, unless your platform requires 2FA for everyone. If it's required platform-wide, you're prompted to set it up at login and can't skip it.
Can I belong to more than one company? Yes, if your platform administrator has given you access to more than one. Each company you're a member of keeps its own roles, permissions and data. Nothing crosses over between them.
Why can't a Storekeeper approve the invoice for something they received? By design. Receiving and approving are kept in different hands on purpose, so the person confirming a delivery arrived is never the same person confirming the bill for it is correct. See Roles & Permissions for more on this kind of separation.