"Did You Use That Before or After the New Foundation?"
That question, asked by a dermatologist after a second breakout in six weeks, is unanswerable without data. You remember buying two new products in the same month. You don't remember the order in which you opened them, which one was applied the day the breakout started, or what the ingredients list said on the one you've since finished and thrown away.
The Broke Out field in this template is the answer to that question, recorded at the time it's relevant.
Broke Out: The Field That Makes the Inventory a Diagnostic Tool
Broke Out is a five-level choice field: No, Lightly, Moderately, Severely, TBD, Not Applicable. Most makeup inventory apps, to the extent they exist, don't have this field. It exists here because the Ingredients field exists alongside it, and together they form a reaction log tied to specific products.
A concealer rated "Moderately" for breakout with its full ingredient list recorded is useful data six months later when you're evaluating a new concealer from the same brand and can check whether the shared ingredient — usually a specific ester, silicone variant, or fragrance compound — is the likely trigger. Across twenty or thirty products logged over a year, patterns emerge: every high-breakout product contains a specific ingredient that the zero-breakout products don't share. That's actionable information that no dermatologist can derive from a verbal recall of products used.
TBD is the honest default — most products take two to four weeks of consistent use before a skin reaction becomes attributable rather than coincidental.
Lifecycle Fields: Bought, Opened, Expires
Three dates, three different questions. Bought tells you when it was acquired and enables cost-over-time tracking. Opened is the date that actually starts the clock — most cosmetic expiration guidelines (the PAO period, the period-after-opening symbol on the packaging) count from first use, not purchase. A foundation purchased in January and opened in March has a different practical expiry than one opened the day it arrived.
Expires is the derived endpoint. A mascara with a 3-month PAO opened in March expires in June, regardless of how much product remains. Foundation opened in summer with a 12-month PAO in a climate that runs humid will degrade faster than the packaging assumes.
For acne-prone skin in particular, an expired product logged as "Moderately" for breakout that's still being used past its expiry date is a compounded variable — is the breakout the product or the degraded product? The three date fields remove that ambiguity.
Repurchase, Discontinued, and the Wishlist Loop
Repurchase is a three-option choice: Yes, No, Maybe. It's the post-use verdict that tells you whether a product earned a second chance. Discontinued marks products that are no longer available — useful because a product rated Yes for repurchase that's since been discontinued needs a replacement, not a reorder. The Wishlist boolean marks products not yet owned but under consideration.
Together, these three fields run a simple but functional acquisition cycle: Wishlist → Currently Own (the integer count of units in possession) → Repurchase decision → Discontinued flag if it disappears. The Store URL field and Barcode field exist to close the loop: when a repurchase decision is Yes and the product is still available, Store URL opens directly to the product page and Barcode enables in-store price checking without typing a search.
Total Purchases of Product is the long-run count — how many times a product has been bought across its entire history in the collection. A product on its seventh purchase with a Rating of 4 and Repurchase = Yes is a proven staple. One on its first purchase with Rating = 2 and Broke Out = Lightly is a candidate for discontinuation from the personal collection.
The Cost field in USD quantifies the actual spend pattern. A $12 drugstore concealer repurchased seven times costs $84. A $40 department store concealer repurchased once before being discontinued from personal use costs $40. The inventory makes that comparison visible across the full collection.