The household that does its grocery run from memory is the household that comes home with three cans of chickpeas and no pasta, or runs out of olive oil mid-cook because the bottle in the back of the cupboard looked like it had enough left. The pantry inventory exists for the same reason any warehouse runs cycle counts — because the physical reality of what's in stock and the mental model of what's in stock diverge within days.
The Inventory Layer
Name with Category, Stock, Stock Quantity, Units, and Location are the pantry record. Location — top shelf, freezer, larder, fruit bowl — is the field that reduces search time when the recipe specifies an ingredient and you can't remember where it's stored. In a household with separate dry goods storage, a fridge, a freezer, and a separate drinks cupboard, a location field saves the multi-room search.
Exp. and Use within days are the expiry management fields. The use-within-days field is more practically useful than the printed expiry date for products without clear shelf life once opened — tahini, nut butter, fermented products, refrigerated sauces. A jar opened three weeks ago that has a twelve-month best-before date may still have only ten days of safe opened-shelf life. The use-within-days calculation from opening date is the information that the printed label doesn't provide.
Barcode enables product lookup and reordering by scanning. Brands and Shop record the preferred brand and purchasing location — the combination that determines whether the restock happens at the regular supermarket or requires a specific shop.
The Shopping Trigger System
Need Shopping and Basket are the automation-connected fields. Need Shopping is the threshold flag — when stock quantity drops below a defined level, the item triggers for restock. Basket moves confirmed items into the active shopping list. Quantity for Shopping, Price, and Shopping Price handle the purchasing detail — how much to buy, the unit price, and the actual paid price, which enables cost tracking across shopping runs.
The combination of Need Shopping with Basket creates a two-stage confirmation: an item can be in the "needs shopping" state without being on the active basket, allowing for review before committing to a shopping trip. For households managing a budget, this review stage prevents impulse additions from inflating the weekly spend.
The Embedded Meal Planner
What can I cook? Do I have all ingredients? is the query that connects inventory to meal planning. 1st, Cooking, 1, Ingredients1 — plus the equivalent fields for second and third meal options — embed a three-meal plan directly in the inventory record.
The ingredients field for each meal functions as the availability check: if the ingredients for the planned meals are in the pantry record with adequate stock quantities, the meal is achievable. If an ingredient is below threshold or missing, the shopping trigger fires before the meal plan is disrupted. It's the connection between what you intend to cook and what you actually have that collapses the gap between meal planning and grocery shopping.
Picture and Notes complete the product record — the visual identification for products where the label is ambiguous, and the notes for preparation reminders, substitution notes, or sourcing details.