Help & FAQ

FreshFolio is a paid subscription app, but every new user starts with a 2-Month Free Trial of our Pro features. After the trial, you can subscribe to Standard or Pro, or the app enters a read-only mode so your data is never lost. We believe in "Try Before You Buy" so you can see the full value before committing.

FreshFolio has three tiers:

• Free Trial: Full Pro access for 2 months — no credit card required.
• Standard: Core pantry tracking, barcode scanning, OCR expiration capture, shopping lists, shared pantries, and recipe import from the web.
• Pro: Everything in Standard, plus multiple owned pantries, AI recipe generation from your pantry contents, AI ingredient clean-up, smart substitution suggestions, and Reports & Insights.

All paid plans include unlimited pantry items, multi-pantry collaboration, and cross-device sync.

If you switch to a new phone, reinstall the app, or need to restore an active subscription, you can easily do so:

1. Open the app settings by tapping the gear icon.

2. Tap Subscription or Manage Plan.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the plans screen and tap Restore Purchases.

FreshFolio will query the App Store (iOS) or Google Play Store (Android) for any active receipts associated with your store account and link them back to your profile.

FreshFolio is offline-first. You can view, add, and update your pantry items without a connection — changes sync automatically the next time you are online. An internet connection is required for barcode lookups, AI features, and syncing across multiple devices or with shared pantry members.

FreshFolio is designed local-first. You can perform any action — add items, record consumption, or check off shopping list entries — while offline. These changes are saved securely to your device's local database and sync automatically once you are connected to the internet. If multiple users edit the same item or lot while offline, the changes are synchronized sequentially; in rare cases of direct conflict (such as two users updating the same item's quantity simultaneously), the server's state is authoritative, and the latest synced modification is preserved.

If your subscription or free trial expires and you choose not to renew, your account enters Read-Only Mode. In this state, your pantry inventory, shopping lists, history, and recipes are completely safe and preserved — nothing is deleted. You can still open the app, search, and view your items, but you will not be able to add new items, edit quantities, check off shopping list items, or generate new recipes until you restore an active subscription.

The app has five main tabs at the bottom of the screen:

• Dashboard: At-a-glance summary of expiring items, low stock alerts, and recent activity.
• Shopping: Your shopping list with low-stock suggestions and purchased-item queue.
• Pantry: Your full inventory, organized by category, location, or expiration date.
• Recipes: Browse, import, and generate recipes based on what's in your pantry.
• Meal Calendar: Plan meals by day and week by linking recipes to dates.

There are three ways to add items:

1. Pantry FAB (+): Tap the floating action button on the Pantry screen to open the Put Away hub.

2. Scan Barcode: From the Put Away screen, point your camera at the product barcode to look it up automatically.

3. From Shopping List: Check off items as "Purchased" while you shop. They move to your Purchased Queue and you can Put Away everything in bulk when you get home.

FreshFolio uses a two-tier system inspired by inventory management:

• Pantry Item: The reusable product template (e.g., "Campbell's Tomato Soup"). Stores the product name, brand, category, and default shelf life.
• Lot: A specific purchase instance (e.g., "2 cans purchased on 2/6/2026, expires 12/31/2026"). Each time you buy the same product you create a new Lot.

This approach prevents duplicate data entry and makes it easy to track multiple purchases of the same item at different expiration dates.

When adding an item, you specify:

• Purchase Unit: How you buy it (e.g., Case, Box, Pack)
• Base Unit: The individual unit (e.g., Can, Bottle, Each)
• Units per Purchase: How many base units are in one purchase unit (e.g., 12 cans per case)

This allows accurate inventory tracking. For example, if you buy 2 cases of soup (12 cans each), FreshFolio tracks 24 cans in your pantry.

Tap any pantry item to open its detail view, then tap a Lot to act on it:

• Use: Record that you consumed part or all of a Lot. FreshFolio decrements the quantity and logs it in your transaction history.
• Dispose: Record that a Lot was discarded without being used. You will be asked to select a reason — Expired, Spoiled, Missing, Waste, or Other. Disposals are tracked in Reports so you can spot patterns over time.

You can also swipe Left on any item in the pantry list for quick actions.

FreshFolio includes several swipe shortcuts to manage your pantry faster:

• In the Pantry List: Swipe Left on an item to quickly add it to your Shopping List.
• In the Item Details Screen (on Inventory Lots):
  • Swipe Right to reveal the Transfer action (to move that specific lot to another storage location) or the Dispose action.
  • Swipe Left to reveal the Mark Opened action (which starts the post-open countdown for that lot) or the Edit Expiry action.
• In the Purchased Queue (Put Away Hub):
  • Swipe Right to Restore to List (re-adds the item to your active shopping list and removes it from the queue).
  • Swipe Left to Delete (permanently removes the item from the queue without adding it to inventory).
• In Settings → Pantry Items: Swipe Left on any item template to quickly add it to your Shopping List.

When creating or editing a Pantry Item, you can set a Safety Stock quantity (e.g., "Alert me when I have fewer than 3 cans"). FreshFolio will notify you when your total quantity drops below this level, and the item will also appear in the Shopping list's Low-Stock Suggestions so you remember to restock.

Yes. Shared pantry collaboration is available on all paid plans. Invite family members via a secure link — they can add items, update quantities, check off shopping list items in real-time, and receive the same expiration alerts you do. The pantry owner can also manage member roles.

When you invite someone to your pantry, the app generates a secure single-use invitation link. This link can be sent via text, email, or any messaging app. Clicking the link on a device with FreshFolio installed will automatically open the app and prompt the user to join the pantry. For security, each invite link is single-use and expires after 7 days. If the link expires or has already been used, you will need to generate a new invite link from the settings screen.

What if they don't have the app installed? Clicking the link on a computer or a device without FreshFolio will open a fallback web page on our site with quick links to download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Once they have installed the app and signed in, clicking the invite link again will prompt them to join your pantry.

When you attempt to put away or add an item that already has active stock in your pantry, FreshFolio displays a Still Have Stock prompt:

• Preventing Duplicates/Clutter: This sheet shows a list of your existing lots, their storage locations, and their expiration dates.
• Quick Discard: If you are adding new stock because the old stock was consumed or thrown away without being logged, you can tap Remove to quickly discard the stale lots right from the prompt.
• Keep Both: If you genuinely have both old and new stock, tap Proceed anyway to add the new lot alongside your existing inventory.

The Verify Pantry tool helps you keep your inventory quantities accurate over time by prompting you to do quick checks on items you have stored:

• Verification Nudge: On the Pantry tab, FreshFolio displays a verification banner when certain inventory lots are due for a check. The frequency is automatically determined by each item's shelf life (items that spoil quickly are queued for checks more frequently).
• Verifying Stock: Tap the nudge to review items one by one. If the expected quantity matches what you actually have, tap Correct. If it has changed, tap Adjust to enter the new count.
• All Caught Up: Once verified, the item is removed from the verification list until its next scheduled check.

Every account includes one personal pantry. FreshFolio Pro unlocks the ability to create additional pantries — useful for organizing separate spaces like a garage fridge, a vacation cabin, or a second household location. You can always be a member of pantries shared with you regardless of your plan.

Yes. Long-press any item in the pantry list to enter selection mode, then tap additional items to select them. Tap the Dispose button to bulk-dispose all Lots across every selected item in one step with a single reason.

Pantry Essentials is a persistent staples list — a set of items you always expect to have on hand, independent of your live inventory. Find it in Settings → Pantry Essentials. The app pre-loads smart defaults grouped by category (Dairy, Baking, Spices, etc.), which are labeled with a Smart badge. You can add your own essentials, edit or delete any entry, and tap Restore Defaults to bring back the built-in list at any time. Essentials feed into Low-Stock Suggestions on your shopping list so you're reminded to restock items you consider staples.

Yes. Every time you Put Away an item and record a price, FreshFolio logs it automatically. On any Pantry Item's detail screen, a Price History section appears once purchase data exists — showing the lowest price you've ever paid and which store had that price, plus a per-store comparison sorted cheapest first. No extra setup is required; it builds from your intake transactions.

If you manually created a custom item and later edit it to add a barcode, FreshFolio will attempt to look it up in the global catalog. When a match is found, you will be prompted to choose:

• Update with Registry Data: Replaces your custom product name, brand, category, and units with the official catalog details.
• Keep My Data: Keeps your custom name and information while linking the item to the catalog to inherit background classification tags.

Yes. When you take a photo or select an image from your gallery to represent a product, FreshFolio opens a cropping screen where you can pinch to zoom, rotate, and frame the image. Tapping the save button registers the cropped, optimized photo for your item.

When adding or editing a Lot, tap the camera icon next to the expiration date field. Point your camera at the "Best By" or "Exp" date on the package. Our OCR (Optical Character Recognition) will attempt to detect and parse the date automatically.

If OCR does not detect the date, you can:

1. Manually type the date using the keyboard

2. Use the date picker to select the date

3. Leave it blank and add it later from Item Details

FreshFolio sends push notifications when items are approaching their expiration date. The default look-ahead window is 14 days, but you can adjust this in Settings → Notifications to match your shopping habits. You will receive alerts for any Lot whose expiry falls within your chosen window.

Notifications are also sent for low-stock items once the quantity drops below your Safety Stock threshold.

For many products (like milk or condiments), the item spoils much faster once opened. FreshFolio helps you track this through the Mark Opened feature:

• How to use it: Tap any pantry item to view its details. On the lot card, swipe Left and tap Mark Opened (or tap the lot to edit it manually and toggle the opened state).
• What it does: When you mark a lot as opened, FreshFolio automatically calculates a new expiration date based on the product's post-open shelf life.
• Post-Open calculations: The app looks at the specific pantry item configuration first. If not overridden by you, it inherits estimates from the global catalog (e.g. from the FoodKeeper database) or general storage type rules (such as 5 days for refrigerated items). If the post-open shelf life is shorter than the original expiration date, the lot's active expiration date is reduced to prevent you from using spoiled food.

Tap the Shopping tab. You can:

• Scan Barcode: Tap the scanner icon to quickly add products by UPC.
• Manual Add: Tap the FAB (+) to type an item name.
• Low-Stock Suggestions: Items below your Safety Stock threshold appear automatically — tap the add button next to any suggestion to move it to your active list.
• Restock from Pantry: Swipe Left on any pantry item to add it to the shopping list instantly.

Yes. Type the name in the shopping list and add it as a custom item. When you Put Away later, FreshFolio will automatically create the product record so you don't have to set it up twice.

Checking off an item on your shopping list marks it as Purchased and moves it to the Purchased Queue. Because FreshFolio syncs in real-time, one family member can check off items at the store while another sees them appear in the queue at home.

To add purchased items to your pantry inventory:

1. Go to the Pantry tab and tap Put Away.

2. Items already in your queue are shown — review or update the expiration date, quantity, and storage location for each.

3. You can also add items directly here via Scan Barcode or Search if they weren't on the list.

4. If you made a mistake, you can swipe Right on any item in the Purchased Queue to Restore to List (undoing the purchase), or swipe Left to Delete (dismissing the item from the queue without adding it to your pantry).

Active items feature a Compact Stepper [ − ] 1 [ + ] inline on the list. Tap the plus or minus to adjust the amount you need without opening a separate screen.

FreshFolio offers three ways to build your digital cookbook:

• Manual Add: Type in your own family recipes whenever recipe access is available on your plan.
• Web Import: Standard, Trial, and Pro can import a recipe URL from supported sites to quickly save the title, ingredients, and steps.
• AI Generation: Trial and Pro can tap the magic icon to generate recipe ideas based on what's currently in the pantry.

FreshFolio Pro adds the AI recipe layer on top of everything in Standard:

• Pantry-based recipe ideas: Generate meals tailored to the ingredients you already have.
• AI ingredient clean-up: Automatically normalize and tidy imported ingredient lists before you cook or shop from them.
• Zero-waste suggestions: Surface recipes that help you use items before they expire.
• Smart substitutions: Get fallback ingredient ideas when something is missing.

Yes. You can customize how FreshFolio suggests and generates recipes to match your household's needs. Tap the gear/tune icon in the top right of the Recipes screen (or go to Recipe Settings) to configure:

• Default Servings: Set your preferred portion size (from 1 to 12 servings) so ingredient measurements scale automatically.
• Maximum Cooking Time: Restrict generated recipes to quick meals (e.g., under 30 minutes) or set it to "Any" time.
• Allergens: Add specific ingredients you need to avoid (such as peanuts, shellfish, or tree nuts). FreshFolio will exclude recipes containing these items.
• Dietary Tags: Toggle standard dietary preferences like Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Nut-Free, Halal, Keto, or Paleo.

Yes. To ensure fair use and system stability, daily limits apply to automated features:

• Free Trial: 5 AI Generations and 5 Web Imports per day.
• Standard: 50 Web Imports per day. AI Generation requires Pro.
• Pro: 50 AI Generations and 50 Web Imports per day.

By default, FreshFolio groups your recipes by their primary category (Breakfast, Dinner, etc.). You can toggle this off or change the sort order (e.g., by Rating or Cook Time) using the Filter icon in the top right of the Recipes screen.

To check if you have recipe ingredients in stock (and to auto-deduct them in Cooking Mode), FreshFolio maps recipe ingredients to your pantry item blueprints:

• Fuzzy Match (Automatic): FreshFolio uses smart tags and ingredient names to automatically search your pantry for matching items.
• Manual Mapping (Authoritative): In the **Ingredient Review** screen, you can tap any ingredient to search your catalog and link it directly to a specific pantry item blueprint. Manual mappings are pantry-specific and always take priority.
• Smart Clean-up (Pro/Trial): Tap the AI clean-up button to normalize raw recipe text (e.g., converting "2 cups low-fat milk" into item: "Milk", quantity: "2", unit: "cups"). Normalized ingredients match your pantry stock with much higher accuracy.

When you view a recipe, you can tap the **Shopping Cart** button to open the **Ingredient Review** screen. This screen acts as a smart bridge before adding items to your shopping list:

• Stock Checking: FreshFolio compares the required recipe ingredients against your current active pantry stock. If you have enough of an item, it is automatically deselected (meaning you don't need to buy it).
• Staples/Essentials Exclusion: Items matching your **Pantry Essentials** list (like salt or flour) are kept unchecked by default, assuming you already have staples on hand.
• Manual Adjustments: You can check or uncheck ingredients, adjust the required quantities, or swap a missing item for an AI-suggested **Smart Substitution** (Pro/Trial feature) before adding the unchecked items to your active shopping list.

Tap the Cook button on any recipe to enter Cooking Mode — a step-by-step walkthrough that keeps your screen on so it doesn't dim while you cook. Steps are displayed one at a time on large, easy-to-read cards and you page through them at your own pace. When you finish the last step, FreshFolio offers to automatically deduct the used ingredients from your pantry inventory so your stock stays accurate without manual updates.

FreshFolio uses a dual safety check system to keep non-edible household supplies out of recipe suggestions:

• Safety Filters: The recipe generator only pulls items classified under edible system groups (like Grocery). Non-food groups (like Household or Pet Care) are strictly excluded from ingredients.
• Grocery Overrides: If you store specialty food ingredients in a non-food category, you can edit the item and turn on the Grocery Override toggle to make it eligible. Conversely, turning this toggle off ensures the item is never suggested for cooking.

The Meal Calendar tab lets you plan your meals by day and week. Link any recipe in your library to a specific date, and use the calendar view to see the week ahead at a glance. It is available to all users on an active subscription.

Yes. You can plan a meal by name even if you haven't saved a full recipe for it. Tap any day in the calendar and add a free-text meal entry.

To plan a meal, tap any day in the Meal Calendar to open the meal planner sheet:

• Meal Type: Select whether the meal is for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, or a Snack.
• Recipe Linkage: Start typing the title of any recipe in your library to autocomplete and link it. Linking a recipe allows you to jump directly to that recipe's details and enter Cooking Mode straight from your calendar.
• Custom Entry: If you don't have a saved recipe, you can simply type a custom name (e.g., "Leftover Pizza") and add notes or descriptions.

FreshFolio supports:

• UPC-A (standard US barcodes)
• UPC-E (compressed UPC)
• EAN-13 (international barcodes)
• EAN-8

Product information is looked up from third-party databases (OpenFoodFacts, UPCItemDB, and BarcodeSpider). If a product is not found, you can:

1. Add the product manually with your own name, brand, and category.

2. Take a picture or upload a custom image to represent the product. Note: When you create custom products (including names, brands, categories, and product pictures), this data is stored on our servers and used to populate our community product database, making it available to other users who scan the same barcode.

3. Contribute the product directly to OpenFoodFacts — it helps other users worldwide.

No. The barcode lookup requires an internet connection to query the product database. The camera can scan the code offline, but the product details will not populate until connectivity is restored.

FreshFolio offers several organization methods:

• Categories: Group items by type (Dairy, Produce, Canned Goods, etc.)
• Locations: Track where items are stored (Fridge, Freezer, Pantry, or any custom location you create)
• Sort & Filter: Switch between grouping by category, location, or expiration date from the pantry view controls.

Yes. Go to Settings → Category Management to create, rename, reorder, and delete custom categories.

Yes. Manage all your storage areas in Settings → Location Management.

Each category in your settings has a list of Smart Tags — keywords pulled from the global OpenFoodFacts database. When you scan a product, the app matches its tags to your category list and assigns it to the best match.

If an item matches tags in two different categories, it is placed in whichever category appears higher in your Category list. Reorder your categories in Settings to change this priority.

Go to Settings → Category Management, select a category, and edit its Smart Tags. Adding a specific keyword like "sparkling" to your Beverages category ensures any bubbly water you scan is filed correctly going forward.

Yes. Go to Settings → Unit Management to create custom units alongside the built-in global defaults. Custom units are local to your pantry.

The Dashboard tab gives you an at-a-glance view of your pantry's health: items expiring soon, current low-stock alerts, and a summary of recent activity. It is available on all plans.

Pro subscribers can access full Reports & Insights with a selectable timeframe of Month-to-Date, Year-to-Date, or Last Year. The screen includes:

• 4 KPI cards: Current Inventory value, Consumed value, Waste value, and Efficiency % (share of food used vs. wasted). Waste shows a period-over-period delta chip.
• Food Usage bar: A visual consumed vs. wasted split with an efficiency percentage for the selected period.
• Spend vs Waste trend chart: A line chart of consumed and wasted spend by week or month.
• Top Wasted Items: A ranked list of the items you dispose of most, sorted by monetary value wasted.
• Waste Reason Breakdown: Bar breakdown of disposal reasons — Expired, Spoiled, Missing, and Other — with counts and percentages.

From the Reports screen, tap the history icon (receipt) in the top right to open Activity History. You can filter it in several ways:

• Date range: Tap the timeframe pill to choose a preset (Last 30 Days, Last 12 Months) or set a custom date range.
• Transaction type: Tap the filter icon to show only adds, uses, or disposals.
• Text search: Type an item name or brand into the search bar.
• Barcode scan: Tap the scan icon next to the search bar to filter history for a specific product by scanning its barcode.

Pantry owners receive a **Weekly Pantry Summary** email every Monday at 08:00 UTC. This email summarizes your pantry's activity over the past week and highlights what needs your attention:

• Current Status: Active item counts, low stock warnings, and items already out of stock.
• Expiration Alerts: A list of up to 10 items expiring within the next 14 days (including post-open adjusted expiration dates).
• Weekly Activity: Total volume of items added, consumed, and disposed.
• Top Consumed: The top 5 items consumed in your household during the week.

If you wish to opt-out or adjust other notifications, you can do so in Settings → Notifications.

Yes. Your pantry data is private and only visible to you and any family members you explicitly invite to a shared pantry. We do not sell or share your data with third parties.

You can request account deletion via Settings → Delete Account inside the app, or visit our Account Deletion Page. Enter your email and you will receive a secure confirmation link. Once confirmed, your account is deactivated immediately and permanently deleted after a 30-day grace period.

If you are the owner of a shared pantry, deleting your account will also revoke access for all members of that pantry. If you are a member (not the owner), only your access is removed — the pantry and its data remain for the owner and other members.

You can reach us via the Contact Support page or by emailing admin@illyriasolutions.com directly. We typically respond within 1–2 business days.

Use the Contact Support form and include as much detail as possible: what you were doing, what you expected to happen, and what happened instead. A screenshot is always helpful.

The reusable product template (e.g., "Campbell's Tomato Soup"). Stores brand, category, default shelf life, and Safety Stock threshold.

A specific purchase instance of a Pantry Item, with its own expiration date, quantity, and storage location.

The intake flow where you confirm the details of purchased items (expiry date, quantity, location) and move them from the Purchased Queue into your active pantry inventory.

A staging area for items you have checked off on your shopping list. Items wait here until you Put Away and confirm their details.

The minimum quantity you want to keep on hand for a given item. When your stock falls below this level, FreshFolio sends a notification and adds the item to Low-Stock Suggestions on your shopping list.

The action of removing a Lot from inventory without consuming it — for example when food has expired, spoiled, gone missing, or been thrown away. A reason is always recorded so disposal data appears accurately in your waste reports.

The technology used to detect and read expiration dates from product packaging using your device camera.

Keywords associated with a category (e.g., "frozen", "dairy", "beverage") used to automatically classify scanned products. You can add or edit Smart Tags in Settings → Category Management.

A pantry-level staples list of items you always expect to have on hand. Separate from live inventory — Essentials represent what should be stocked, not what is currently stocked. Managed in Settings → Pantry Essentials.

A step-by-step recipe walkthrough that keeps the device screen on while cooking and offers to auto-deduct used ingredients from pantry inventory when the recipe is complete.

A per-item record of what you paid and at which store, derived automatically from Put Away transactions. Visible on each Pantry Item's detail screen once at least one purchase has been recorded.