Inventory Buddy

Sign in to access your inventory. Need an account? Contact your Inventory Buddy administrator.

Email Password

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About Inventory Buddy

Inventory Buddy is a website that helps school cafeteria staff count and track food inventory without paper. It was built by Mary Davis, a school cafeteria worker in Tennessee, after hearing at a work meeting that paper inventory was a pain point for just about everybody there.

What it stores

Your account email and password (passwords are stored scrambled — nobody can read them), and your inventory: product names, quantities, storage locations, and count and delivery dates.

What it never stores

Student names or student records of any kind. Meal accounts, balances, or eligibility information. Money, prices, or financial information.

Who can see your inventory

Only your school's account. Every account is walled off from every other account. Your data is never sold and never shared with advertisers.

For administrators

Inventory counts are products on shelves — no student information is involved, ever. The pilot is free, there is nothing to install, and it runs in a normal web browser. If your school stops using Inventory Buddy, its account and inventory data can be deleted on request.

Privacy, in plain words

What Inventory Buddy stores: your account email and a password (the password is stored scrambled — nobody, including Mary, can read it), and your inventory: product names, quantities, storage locations, and count/delivery dates.

What it never stores: student names or student records of any kind; meal accounts, balances, or eligibility information; money, prices, or financial information; anything about anybody who is not your own school's account holder.

Who can see your inventory: only your school's account. Every account is walled off from every other account — signing in shows your school's shelves and nothing else's. Your data is never sold, never shared with advertisers, and never used for anything except running your inventory.

Where it lives: Inventory Buddy runs on GitHub Pages with its database at Supabase, an established U.S. database provider. Your inventory sits behind your password-protected login.

Leaving: stop any time — there is nothing to cancel during the pilot. Email Mary and your account and its inventory data will be deleted.

Questions: Mary Davis — marybeth.davis28@gmail.com · (731) 358-5337

Add an Item

Item name Category Location Package type (how you count this item) Items per package

This is specific to this item. Example: Donuts = 80/case, Rolls = 120/case, Milk = 50/crate, Juice = 75/crate.

Current quantity Minimum stock Normal order quantity Item number (the yellow code on the case label)

Barcode (the stripes number — scanning fills this in for you)

Adding a whole case? 📦 Box Label is faster — it reads the case label for you. This form is for typing an item in by hand.

Supplier

⚡ Quick Count

Find an item and quickly add or subtract from its current quantity.

Search item Category

📋 My Inventory

Use 🧮 Use Items when you open a package and use individual items. Inventory Buddy keeps the remaining amount as a package fraction and also shows the estimated individual units left.

Search inventory

⚠️ Low Stock

🗓️ End of Month

A counting tool just for the end of month. Walk the shelves and scan each case — Buddy tallies as you go. When you finish, it compares what you counted against what's already in your list, shows you the differences, and builds your end of month pull sheet: the compiled count on one sheet you can print or save.

Heads up: this only works right if all your stock is already in Buddy first. Anything that was never entered can't be checked — it will show up as "scanned but not in your list."

Location to count

🏢 Suppliers

Add the suppliers your business uses. You can assign a supplier to each inventory item.

Supplier name Phone or website (optional)

📸 Receive Order

Take a picture now or upload one later. You can add multiple pages, review what was read, and only update inventory after you confirm.

Supplier (optional)

📷 Camera won't open? If you opened this app from inside Messenger or Facebook, those apps block the camera — open it in Safari or Chrome instead. Or take the photo first, then tap Upload Photo(s).

✍️ Add Item Manually

Use this when you do not have a photo, are in a hurry, or the receipt reader misses an item.

Inventory item

Received quantity Receipt unit

📦 Scan Box Label

Snap a photo of a product box label. The app reads the item code, name, and pack size — check the fields, fix anything, then save it to your inventory.

📷 Camera won't open? Open the app in Safari or Chrome instead of inside Messenger/Facebook — or take the photo first, then tap Upload Photo.

🔁 Fast load: after each save, open the camera for the next label

Scanning a whole delivery? Bulk Scan reads each label and lines the cases up — check the codes and counts as they land, then file them all at once.

📋 Order History

See what you marked as ordered and when.

🧾 Order List

Only items at or below minimum stock appear here.

Search Category

📦 Inventory Buddy