Catalog

Manage → Catalog. The catalog belongs to the current list; each list has its own.

Every product you’ve ever added to a list has one record in its catalog: the name, its barcodes, category, preferred store, unit, price, minimum quantity, whether it has an expiry date, how long it keeps after opening, a photo and a description. Think of it as the product’s business card. The milk in your fridge — with today’s quantity and expiry date — is a separate entry that refers to that card.

You rarely need to open the catalog on purpose: InvenDo builds it for you as you add items. It comes in handy when you want to tidy up a product’s details in one place, manage its barcodes, or find something you’ve completely run out of.

What the catalog does for you

• Suggestions while you type. Start typing in Item name and matching products appear. Pick one and the form fills in the category, unit, price, store and everything else it knows.
• Barcode recognition. Scan a barcode that’s already in the catalog and the item form opens pre-filled. A product can carry several barcodes — see Scanning barcodes.
• Remembered details. Category, unit, unit size, price, preferred store, minimum quantity, description and photo are stored once per product and reused every time you add it again — as is the storage place you last put it in.
• Shelf life after opening. Tell InvenDo once how many days a product keeps after opening, and it sets the consume-by date for you every time you open one. See Opened items.

Browsing the catalog

• Products are listed alphabetically. Tap the category icon in the top bar to group them by category instead.
• Use the search field to find a product by name or barcode. On a phone, tap the microphone to search by voice or the barcode icon to scan the pack.
• Tap a product to edit it; tap + to create one that isn’t in your lists yet.
• The cart icon on a row adds that product to the Shopping List — useful for something you’ve run out of completely.

Editing a product

1. Open Manage → Catalog and tap the product.

2. Change what you need. The fields you see depend on the list’s Features and Fields and on the product’s category — if the “Tools” category has expiry dates switched off, a screwdriver won’t offer an Expiry date switch.

3. Tap ✓ to save.

Most changes — category, unit, unit size, minimum quantity, description, photo — show up straight away on the items already in your Inventory and Shopping List. Barcodes, the expiry-date switch and the shelf life are used from the next time you add or open the product.

Tip

You can change the same details from any item’s Edit form — they are saved to the catalog too. The catalog is simply the place to do it without going through a particular item.

Deleting a product

Swipe the product left or right and confirm.

Caution

Deleting a catalog product also deletes every Inventory and Shopping List entry of that product, in every storage place. If you only want to remove the one in the fridge, delete or reduce that item in your Inventory instead.

Good to know

• Adding a product photo is a Premium feature.
• In the web version there is no camera, so barcodes are typed in rather than scanned.
• On a read-only list (an extra list on the free plan) the catalog can be browsed and searched but not changed.