Choose the right product type
A product's mode decides how Rinvy counts it, orders it and costs it. Rinvy has five modes: quantity-tracked (the default), status-tracked, auto-tracked, recipe output and non-inventoried. Pick the mode that matches where the item comes from and how exactly you need to know what is on the shelf. Any product can also be inactive.
Each mode except the default has a toggle on the add and edit product form. Turn one on and the form shows the fields for that mode. With every toggle off, the product is quantity-tracked.
Quantity-tracked (the default)
The right mode for almost everything you buy.
- Count in exact units (lb, each, case, gallon).
- Appears in counts, the order list, low-stock alerts, recipes, and every report.
- Tracks cost from receipts.
Use for: chicken breast, flour, buns, beer kegs, produce, sauces you buy in bulk.
Status-tracked
The right mode for non-countables where OK/Low/Out is enough.
- Three states: OK, Low, Out.
- Does not appear in cost reports, waste logging, or recipe ingredients.
- Joins the order list only at Low or Out, without a cost.
- Receiving a status product resets stock to OK regardless of quantity received.
Use for: napkins, to-go boxes, cleaning supplies, smallwares.
Auto-tracked
The right mode for things you sell one-for-one, straight out of the cooler. Instead of counting them every night, Rinvy subtracts what your POS says you sold.
- Requires a sales feed — uploaded sales data or Toast auto-sync. Available on Standard and Pro.
- An upload can be a POS export, for example the item sales report that Square exports as a CSV file (Square Support: item sales reports).
- Turning it on asks for a selling price and a starting count, then creates a matching menu item for you so POS sales can find the product.
- Skipped during regular inventory counts. Reconcile with a physical count whenever you like via Recount auto-tracked items on the Inventory page.
- Stock can go negative — that's the shrinkage signal. A recount resets the running balance.
- A sales upload that covers days already counted deducts stock with the recipe that was in use on those days.
- The menu item Rinvy creates for the product keeps its one-ingredient recipe. You can change its name and price, but not its ingredients or yield.
Use for: bottled soda, canned beer, packaged snacks, bottled water. For setup, recounts and how sales reduce stock, see auto-tracked products.
Recipe output
The right mode for things you make in-house.
- Cannot be purchased from suppliers (receiving will reject any line that maps to a recipe-output product).
- Produced by recipes; consumed by other recipes or sold as menu items.
- Cost is computed recursively from ingredient costs.
- Turning on Recipe output only clears the supplier, case size and case cost. The cost then comes only from the product's recipe.
- If no recipe makes the product, menu items that use it show cost incomplete, and the product form warns you. Create a recipe for it, or turn the toggle off if you buy it.
Use for: marinara, pizza dough, chicken stock, dough balls.
To bridge a prepped item back to a purchasable raw ingredient, set its source product link.
Non-inventoried
The right mode for things used in recipes that shouldn't affect inventory value or appear in counts.
- Skipped in counts, ordering, and cost calculations.
- Can still be a recipe ingredient.
- Marking a product non-inventoried removes its storage area and clears its supplier, case size, cost, and source link. Turning the toggle back off does not restore those values — you'll need to re-enter them.
Use for: water, ice, salt used only in recipes, items that shouldn't show up in inventory value.
Products in more than one place
A product can have extra places. An extra place is another storage area where Rinvy also counts the product, and each count adds the places up into one total. You set them with Also stored in on the edit form. For the details, see Count a product in more than one place.
The mode decides if a product can have extra places:
- Quantity-tracked and recipe-output products can have them.
- Status-tracked products cannot, because OK, Low and Out do not add up.
- Auto-tracked and non-inventoried products cannot, because they are not part of a regular count.
The form hides Also stored in for the modes that cannot have extra places. If you change a product to one of those modes, Rinvy removes its extra places.
Should you delete a product or make it inactive?
Make it inactive. Rinvy deletes a product only when it has no history, and an inactive product keeps every past report as it was.
- Hidden from counts, the order list, low-stock alerts, and the default product list.
- Still appears in old receipts, recipes, prep logs, and most historical reports (Food Cost, Spending, Waste, Variance, Product, Menu Item) — a closed period doesn't change because a product was archived afterwards.
- The Inventory Value report is the one exception: it shows what your inventory is worth right now, not history, so an archived product is left out by default (an old count that never got zeroed out shouldn't inflate today's total). Its Include archived toggle brings it back if you need to check.
- Reactivatable at any time.
On the Products page, an Inactive filter chip lets you show archived products and reactivate them.
Old records matter outside Rinvy too. The IRS says to keep the records that support a tax return until its period of limitations runs out, in most cases 3 years (IRS: how long should I keep records). An inactive product keeps its counts, receipts and waste in your history.
Common mistakes
Switching a product to status tracking and losing all the cost data
Status tracking force-clears supplier, case size, case cost, and conversions. If you set those up once and then switched to status, the values are gone — you'd have to re-enter them to switch back.
Trying to receive a recipe-output product
Receipts are blocked server-side for recipe-output and non-inventoried products. If a product you expect to receive isn't showing up in the search, check whether it's one of those types.
Deleting instead of inactivating
Hard delete is only allowed if the product has no history (no counts, receipts, orders, recipes or earlier versions of a recipe, prep logs, or waste). Otherwise the delete falls back to deactivation silently. Inactivating directly is clearer.