The Routine That Isn't Working and the Product You Can't Identify
You've been breaking out intermittently for three months. Not severely, but consistently — jaw and cheek, which your dermatologist says points to something topical rather than hormonal. You've been asked to bring a list of everything you're currently using. You can name four products off the top of your head. You're fairly sure there are eight.
The skincare tracker is the list your dermatologist is asking for.
Sunscreen as a Category Within a Category
Most skincare trackers treat SPF products as one entry type among many. This template treats sunscreen as a specialized sub-domain with its own set of fields: Sunscreen Type (Mineral, Chemical, Combo), SPF (a decimal field for values like SPF 30, SPF 46, SPF 100), and PA rating (PA+ through PA++++, the UVA protection scale used primarily in Asian market formulations). These three fields only apply when Type = Sunscreen — they're not relevant to a serum or cleanser — but their presence reflects an understanding of how sunscreen decisions actually work.
Mineral versus chemical is not a cosmetic distinction. Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide in mineral formulations sit on top of the skin. Chemical filters — avobenzone, octinoxate, oxybenzone — absorb and convert UV energy, require 20-30 minutes to activate after application, and carry a higher rate of contact sensitization in reactive skin. Someone managing rosacea or post-procedure sensitivity needs to know which of their six sunscreens is mineral and which is chemical, and filter accordingly. The PA field matters for anyone addressing hyperpigmentation: PA++++ indicates broad-spectrum UVA coverage, which is specifically what drives PIH. SPF alone doesn't tell you that.
Broke Out, Ingredients, and Building an Evidence File
The Broke Out field — TBD, No, Lightly, Moderately, Severely — is the field that earns the medical_records category placement. A skincare database that doesn't track reactions is just an inventory. One that cross-references reaction severity with a stored ingredients list becomes a longitudinal patch-test equivalent that dermatologists have no other way of accessing.
The standard clinical approach to suspected contact dermatitis is patch testing: applying panels of known sensitizers to the back and reading reactions at 48 and 96 hours. This covers common culprits but not specific formulation combinations. A home skincare database with sixty products, each rated for breakout severity and each with a full INCI ingredient list in the Ingredients field, can surface ingredient correlations across the personal product history that patch testing never will. Every "Moderately" entry shares at least one ingredient with every other "Moderately" entry. The one that doesn't appear in any "No" entry is the working hypothesis.
Three Dates for One Product
Bought records acquisition. Opened starts the PAO clock — the period-after-opening symbol, typically printed as an open jar with a number of months. Expires records when the product should be discarded.
The gap between Bought and Opened matters for tracking product accumulation. A serum bought in January and not opened until April has had three months of shelf time before the clock started. For actives — vitamin C serums especially, which oxidize after exposure to air — that shelf time affects potency even before the PAO begins. Filtering for Opened = more than 12 months ago with Expires = future date finds products that may be past effective potency even if the formal expiry hasn't arrived.
Repurchase, Total Purchases, and the Cost of a Working Routine
The Repurchase field (Yes/No/Maybe) in combination with Total Purchases of Product gives a longitudinal view of the formulas that have earned long-term loyalty. A moisturizer rated Yes for repurchase, purchased seven times, with a consistent Broke Out = No rating, is a proven baseline product. One purchased twice, rated Maybe, with Broke Out = Lightly is under conditional trial.
Cost in USD makes the full routine spend visible. An effective routine with twelve products averaging $35 per unit costs $420 per repurchase cycle. Knowing that number is not a luxury consideration — it's what tells you whether a cheaper alternative is worth testing against a known-stable product, and whether the total current spend is sustainable against the frequency at which each product needs to be replaced.
The Discontinued flag marks products the manufacturer has stopped making. A product rated Yes for repurchase that's flagged as discontinued needs an active replacement search — not a reorder link that leads to an out-of-stock page.