FreshFolio Help & FAQ – Pantry, Expiration & Recipe Guide

Start with a few perishables or your latest grocery trip instead of inventorying every cupboard at once. From the Pantry tab, tap Put Away to search for an item, scan its barcode, or work through purchases checked off on your shopping list. Review each item's quantity, location, and expiration date before saving it to your pantry.

You can leave an expiration date blank and let FreshFolio estimate one, but check the date printed on the package when you can. Add more items over time; a second purchase of the same product becomes another Lot with its own quantity and expiration date.

FreshFolio is a paid subscription app, but every new user starts with a 30-Day 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.

Editing is available once your current account profile confirms write access. If the profile has not loaded successfully yet, editing stays disabled. A temporary sync error after the profile has loaded keeps the last known access state for that account. Signing out or switching accounts disables editing until the current account's profile confirms access.

FreshFolio has three tiers:

• Free Trial: Full Pro access for 30 days — no credit card required.
• Standard: Core pantry tracking, barcode scanning, OCR expiration capture, shopping lists, shared pantries, recipe import from the web, and adding your own recipes.
• Pro: Everything in Standard, plus multiple owned pantries, Receipt Scanning, AI recipe generation from your pantry contents, AI ingredient clean-up, and smart substitution suggestions.

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

See full pricing →

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 ⋮ menu (top right, from most pantry screens) and choose Profile to reach Settings.

2. Tap Subscription.

3. 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 saves many pantry and shopping-list changes on your device while offline and syncs them when you reconnect. Looking up a barcode not already saved in your current pantry, AI features, receipt scanning, and starting Cooking Mode require a connection. Known pantry barcodes can be found offline. Other devices and shared-pantry members see your changes after they sync.

Pantry edits, recorded consumption, and shopping-list changes can be saved on your device while offline. They sync when the connection returns. Looking up unfamiliar barcodes, receipt scanning, AI features, and starting Cooking Mode need a connection; barcodes already saved in the current pantry can be found offline.

If two pantry members change the same field while offline, the change that reaches the server last wins without a conflict warning. Changes to different fields can both survive. Using and throwing out stock are the exception: they add up instead of overwriting, and a use larger than what was left is recorded as what was actually there. A stock count sets the amount you counted. Recheck an item after syncing if a simultaneous edit may have overwritten yours.

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.

Changes you made while offline are still saved when you reconnect, as long as you reconnect within about three days of the plan ending. Changes still waiting after that can't be saved. The app shows a one-time message saying some changes made after your plan ended weren't saved, and those items go back to how they were.

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

• Actions: At-a-glance summary of expiring items, low stock alerts, and recent activity. This is the tab you land on after signing in.
• 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, add your own, import, and generate recipes based on what's in your pantry.
• Meal Calendar: Plan meals by day and week by linking recipes to dates.

Tap the chat-bubble icon at the top of any main tab (Actions, Shopping, Pantry, Recipes, Meals). It's also in the ⋮ menu and in Settings, labeled Assistant. It answers questions about the app and about your current pantry: what to use up, what's past its date, what you wasted or spent recently, what you can cook from your saved recipes, what a saved recipe is missing, whether you have something in stock, what you paid for an item (last price and the lowest in the past year), and what's on the Meal Calendar for the next 7 days. The suggestion buttons on its first screen, Ask about your pantry, are good starting points, and you can dictate with your keyboard's microphone.

When an answer is about your saved recipes, each recipe it mentions appears as a card under the answer, like the ones on What Can I Cook?: how many of its ingredients you have, and by name what's Missing, Running low, Past its date, check first, has a Substitute available, or has an Amount unverified (one the app couldn't check against the recipe). Tap a card to open the recipe.

It looks at the pantry you have open only; switching pantries starts a new chat. The chat lasts until you close the app, and New chat (top right) clears it. Each account can ask up to 60 questions a day. The first time you ask, FreshFolio asks to allow AI features (see "What data do FreshFolio's AI features send?").

Only after you confirm. Tell it something like "I used 2 eggs" or "add milk to my shopping list" and it shows a card ("Record that you used Eggs" or "Add Milk to your shopping list") with the amount you can edit, plus Confirm and Dismiss. It can also add a saved recipe's missing ingredients to your shopping list ("add what I'm missing for the lasagna"), or put a saved recipe on the Meal Calendar ("add the lasagna to dinner on Friday"); those cards name the whole change and have no amount. If several saved recipes match the name you used, it names them and asks which one before offering any card. Nothing changes until you tap Confirm. Only the cards under its latest answer can be confirmed; older ones show "Expired — ask again", because your stock may have changed since. The cards do not appear when the current account lacks write access.

On a Free Trial or Pro plan, ask it to create or make a recipe and it shows a Generate Recipes button that opens the recipe generator. On Standard it answers from your saved recipes instead and mentions that creating new recipes is available on the Pro plan.

Many lists in FreshFolio support swipe actions — swipe a row left or right to reveal quick actions without opening a menu. For your first few sessions, a small ↔ hint with the text "Swipe for actions" appears above lists that support this, and every row below it is swipeable. After that the hint is hidden to give the list more room; the rows still swipe.

Swipe actions are available in these places:

• Shopping List: swipe right for Put Away or Substitute, swipe left for Delete.
• Pantry Inventory and Item Catalog: swipe right to Rate an item, swipe left to Add to Shopping List.
• Item Details (Inventory Lots): swipe right for Transfer or Adjust (fix the count, or throw the lot out), swipe left for Mark Opened or Edit Expiry.
• Purchased Queue (Put Away Hub): swipe right to Substitute, swipe left to Delete.
• Low Stock Suggestions: swipe left to Adjust or Remove a safety stock threshold.
• Recipes: swipe right to Add to Meal Plan, swipe left to Delete.

In Tile/Grid view, rows are shown as compact cards that don't support swiping. Instead, long press a card to open the same quick actions in a menu. For your first few sessions, the hint above the list says "Long press for actions" when this applies.

Actions that change pantry data are locked when your account does not currently have write access, such as after a trial or subscription expires. They also stay locked until your current account profile has loaded successfully. Pantry sharing has Owner and Member roles; there is no separate view-only membership role that the owner can upgrade. Owner-only actions remain restricted to the owner.

No — every swipe action is also available another way. Long-press or tap a row to open an action sheet, or use the equivalent button on the item's detail screen.

There are two primary ways to add items to your pantry, both starting from the Put Away hub (accessible by tapping the + floating action button on the Pantry screen):

1. Through the Search Bar: Use the search bar at the top of the screen. You can either type the product's name to search your catalog, or tap the barcode icon inside the search bar to scan the product's barcode directly.
2. Scanning a Receipt: Tap the receipt floating action button to scan your grocery receipt. FreshFolio will read the receipt and guide you through a flow to put away all your items at once.

Bonus: If you use FreshFolio's Shopping List, items you check off as "Purchased" will automatically appear in the Purchased Queue on this screen, ready to be put away in bulk when you get home.

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

• Catalog 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.

Purchase Unit describes how you buy an item; Base Unit describes how its stock is counted; Units per Purchase is the conversion between them. For example, two packs of six bottles add twelve Each. Standard stock units are Each, Grams and Milliliters; the displayed amount can use your pantry's preferred measurement system. A product's package size is separate from that conversion. An unresolved lookup does not confirm a package count or size; check missing facts against the label before adding stock.

For automatically seeded loose produce tracked by weight, the purchase default follows the pantry's unit system: pounds for imperial pantries and kilograms for metric pantries, with grams used internally. Counted produce and fixed containers keep their count-based default. Existing stock and transaction history keep the units recorded when they were created.

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

• Use: Tap the green Use chip on the Lot to record that you consumed part or all of it. FreshFolio decrements the quantity and logs it in your transaction history.
• Throw it out: Swipe the Lot right, tap Adjust, then tap Throw it out instead. You will be asked to select a reason — Used / Consumed, Expired, Spoiled, Missing, or Other — and then tap Confirm Disposal. The whole Lot is removed. Everything except Used / Consumed is tracked as waste in Reports so you can spot patterns over time; Used / Consumed is logged as a normal Use.

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

Tap the item to open its Item Overview, then find the Lot (the Inventory Lots list) you want to change:

- If you have fewer than the app shows, swipe the Lot right, tap Adjust, and enter how much is really left in the How much is left? sheet, then tap Save. Entering 0 removes the Lot. A lower count is logged as a Use. If you simply ate or cooked some, the green Use chip on the Lot does the same job. - If you want to go back up to what the Lot started with, use Adjust the same way. A count can go up to the amount the Lot started with, but not past it. This is handy if you took too much off by mistake. - If you have more than the Lot started with, Adjust refuses it and says "That's more than this lot started with. Add the extra as a new purchase instead." Put the extra away as a new purchase so it gets its own date and price.

The edit icon at the top of Item Overview changes the item's details, not how much you have. Accounts without current write access see a lock icon on Adjust and cannot use it. The Verify Pantry check (the Time for an Inventory Check! card on the Actions tab) offers Adjust with the same rules.

No — FreshFolio is as easy or as detailed as you want it to be. If you just want to add an item and move on, you can: quantity defaults to 1, storage location is picked for you automatically, and expiration dates are estimated for you if you skip them. Nothing forces you to log when you use up or run out of something either — the item simply stays in your pantry until you act on it, delete it, or respond to an occasional Verify Pantry nudge.

If you prefer precision, every one of those fields is fully editable: exact quantities, specific storage locations, manually entered or scanned expiration dates, and a complete Use/Dispose history for every item. Track as little or as much as fits how you actually shop and cook.

FreshFolio includes several swipe shortcuts to manage your pantry faster:

• In the Pantry List: Swipe Right to Rate an item, swipe Left 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 Adjust action (to fix how much is left, or to throw the lot out with a reason).
  • 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 Substitute (opens Put Away so you can swap in a different product for that queued item).
  • Swipe Left to Delete (permanently removes the item from the queue without adding it to inventory).

Swipe gestures work the same way on the shopping list and recipes — a right swipe reveals the constructive action and a left swipe the removing one. Low-Stock Suggestions is the exception: it only swipes one direction (left), revealing both Adjust and Remove together rather than splitting them across two swipes.

When creating or editing a Catalog 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 pantries work the same way on every plan. Invite people from the ⋮ menu → Pantry Settings → Member Management: enter their email address, and FreshFolio generates a secure invite link and opens your device's share sheet so you can send it however you like — text, email, or any messaging app.

Once someone joins, they can add items, update quantities, check off shopping list items, and receive the same expiration alerts you do. The pantry owner can remove members or transfer ownership from the same screen.

Each invite link is single-use — for security, it expires after 7 days or as soon as it's accepted, whichever comes first. If it's expired or already been used, generate a new one from Member Management. The email address you enter labels the invite in your pending list, but the link itself works for whichever account opens it, so only send it to the person you mean to invite. Opening the link on a device with FreshFolio installed, while signed in, adds that account to your pantry right away and switches to it.

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, opening the invite link again adds them to 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 this? prompt showing your existing lots, their storage locations, and their expiration dates — a check against accidentally creating duplicate or cluttered inventory.

Tap Adjust on a lot to enter how much is actually left, using the same quantity sheet as Verify Pantry and Item Overview. For example, change 1 lb to 0.2 lb, then tap Save. Saving zero removes the lot and records the missing stock as consumed. A count cannot exceed that lot's original purchased quantity.

If the whole lot was consumed or thrown away without being logged, tap Remove and choose the reason; Used / Consumed records consumption rather than waste. The adjustment sheet also offers Throw it out instead to open those reasons. Each lot updates separately, and the review shows the remaining stock. Tap Proceed anyway to continue adding to the shopping list or putting away new stock; removing all existing lots closes the review automatically. Cancelling the review stops the add or put-away, but keeps any stock corrections you already saved.

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 Actions tab, FreshFolio shows a "Time for an Inventory Check!" card when any lots are due. How often something comes up depends on how often you use that particular package: one you've used on 8 or more days in the last 90 is checked as often as every 14 days, one used on 2 or more days around every 30 days, and everything else, including unopened spares, about every 90 days (sooner for short-lived food). Several uses on the same day count as one.
• Verifying Stock: Tap the card to review items one by one — every active lot of that item is shown together, so you count all of them in one pass. After the overdue lots are confirmed, the remaining lots stay available to finish counting for 12 hours; stock added after the first confirmation does not join that continuing count. If the expected quantity matches what you actually have, tap Looks right. If it has changed, tap Adjust to enter the new count. If a package is past its date, the card offers Throw out instead: it removes that package and records it as expired waste, after you confirm in the Throw this out? dialog. If it's still fine, tap Looks right below it.
• 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 — meant for managing inventory somewhere genuinely separate, like a vacation home, a second residence, or a business, not for organizing different storage spots within the same home. A garage fridge or a basement freezer is a Storage Location inside your one pantry, not a reason for a whole separate pantry. You can always be a member of pantries shared with you regardless of your plan.

Each pantry keeps its own inventory, categories, storage locations, units of measure, and Pantry Essentials list — none of it carries over from one pantry to another, so setting up a second pantry means setting these up again (or using the starter-data checkboxes when you create it to speed that up).

The one thing that isn't separate is your saved Recipes: they belong to your account, not to any single pantry, so every recipe you've saved is visible no matter which pantry you're currently viewing. Switching pantries only changes which inventory those recipes get matched against for cookability and "What Can I Cook?" — it never hides or shows different recipes.

When you create a pantry — your first one, or an additional one on Pro — you choose its currency and unit system (Metric or Imperial, defaulted from your device's region but changeable). Two checkboxes, Add default locations and Add Foundation Essentials, are checked by default and seed the new pantry with a starter set of storage locations and staples so you're not starting from a completely blank pantry.

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.

The selected items and reason are captured when you confirm, and controls are disabled while disposal runs. Local lot deletion and disposal history are saved together: a database failure rolls back the batch and shows an error.

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 at ⋮ menu → Pantry 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; a Put Away where you skip the price isn't counted toward price comparisons. On any Catalog Item's detail screen, an expandable Price History section appears after the first Put Away. Tap it to see Last purchase price (the unit price, store and purchase date of the most recent Put Away; the price reads N/A if you skipped it). Once you've recorded prices, it also shows the lowest price you've paid in the past year and which store had that price (Best price (last 12 months)). When you edit a shopping list item you've bought before, its details card also shows the last purchased date, store and price. No extra setup is required; it builds from your intake transactions.

Yes. Swipe Right on any item in the pantry list to open Rate Item. Choose one to five stars, or use the clear icon to remove your selection before saving. While saving, rating controls are disabled. If saving fails, the dialog stays open, shows an error, and lets you try again. Ratings are your own record of whether a product was worth buying, and they persist on the catalog item, so a rating you give once shows up the next time you buy the same thing.

You can also set a rating from the item editor: open the item, tap the pencil Edit Catalog Item in the top bar, and tap one of the five stars under Your Rating. Tap the star you already chose to clear it. Rated items show a star and the number (for example ★ 4) in the Pantry list and on the Shopping List. Rating needs write access to the pantry.

Yes. Open the item, tap the pencil Edit Catalog Item in the top bar, and type in the Notes (Optional) field (it suggests "e.g., Storage tips, details..."). Save your changes when you are done. Use it for anything you want to remember, such as how you stored it or whether you liked it.

On the item's detail screen (Item Overview), the note is shown in full at the bottom of the top card so you can review what you wrote. If you have rated the item, its star rating (for example "4/5") also shows in that card. If the item is on your Shopping List, its note shows in the item's row there too. Adding a note needs write access to the pantry; without it the pencil shows a lock instead.

Give the item a rating and add a note. To rate it, swipe Right on the item in the Pantry list to open Rate Item and choose one to five stars. To add a note, open the item, tap the pencil Edit Catalog Item in the top bar, and type in Notes (Optional).

The rating (shown as a star and number, for example ★ 4) and the note both show on the item's row on your Shopping List, so you see them while you decide what to buy. Buy the items you rated highly again, and skip the ones you rated low or noted that you didn't like, so you don't spend money on them twice. Rating and notes need write access to the pantry.

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.

Receipt scanning starts from the Put Away screen. Tap the receipt floating action button and Scan Your Receipt opens your device's document scanner, which finds the receipt's edges and trims the photo for you. Once the shot is taken FreshFolio reads the receipt and opens Review Receipt. If the scanner cannot open, Scan Receipt shows Scan receipt to retry and Take photo manually, which uses the plain camera and asks you to crop the receipt yourself.

Note: Receipt scanning requires Pro access or an active trial. If your account does not have access, the first time you tap the receipt button it opens Subscription instead of the camera. After that, tapping the button opens the barcode scanner instead, so you are not sent to Subscription every time. Subscribing to Pro or starting a trial brings the receipt scanner back.

Review Receipt sorts the receipt's lines into groups:

• Matched items: lines FreshFolio already recognizes, because the receipt printed the product's full barcode or FreshFolio has learned that store's item code (see "Does receipt scanning get faster the more I use it?").
• Suggested matches: lines whose name FreshFolio has learned for this store, shown with the product it expects. Check that the suggestion is right before saving.
• Needs barcode: lines FreshFolio can't match yet.

Tap Review next item to work through Matched items, then Suggested matches, one line at a time. Each line opens Put Away filled in with the receipt's quantity, price, store, purchase date, and estimated expiration where available; saving it moves on to the next line. For something sold by weight, such as 1.13 lb of grapes, the weight is converted into the unit you buy that item in, such as pounds, or counted as one if you buy it by count. If the receipt shows the amount without its unit and the item is one you buy by weight, a number with decimals such as 1.13 is still read as pounds (kilograms if your pantry uses metric). A deli, meat-counter, or olive-bar item that the receipt lists with only its price has no weight to use, so Put Away opens with the quantity empty for you to enter that package's weight. When only Needs barcode lines are left, the button becomes Scan remaining: scan the product, then choose the receipt line it belongs to. If a product has no barcode or it won't scan, see "What if an item has no barcode, or the barcode won't scan?". Lines that look like something you checked off on your shopping list are marked Checked, Likely checked, or Possible checked, so the purchase can settle against that entry. A scanned or manually selected product determines which checked entry can match it. Different known products require an explicit substitute choice; brand-only similarities are excluded. A text suggestion asks for confirmation during Review Receipt; skipping it leaves the checked entry alone, and Put Away does not ask again. Similarly plausible name candidates are left unlinked instead of choosing one arbitrarily.

A line marked Possible substitute can replace a different product on your checked shopping list. FreshFolio first uses an exact product match when one exists; otherwise it can suggest a substitute you have linked in this pantry. For one candidate, it asks "Did you buy Gala apples instead of Honeycrisp?" Choose "Yes, replace Honeycrisp" to settle that shopping entry, or Keep separate to leave it checked. Several possible replacements open a picker. Closing the question without answering stops that action. Your explicit answer is kept on this device for the same signed-in account and receipt item, so Put Away and reopening the same identified item do not ask again. Choosing a different product requires a fresh choice.

For a newly declared replacement, open an identified receipt line's More actions menu and choose Use as substitute. Pick the checked product you replaced. Inventory keeps what you actually bought, with its own units, price, photo and expiration; purchase history records the original wanted product. Receipt learning remembers the bought product. After saving a new pair, an optional Remember action can link the pair for this pantry without blocking the next item. A pair already linked does not produce that offer.

If the printed weight and price per weight do not agree with the line price, or the rate cannot be read completely, the line shows Check receipt weight. Put Away leaves the quantity empty so you can check the weight and price on the receipt or package and enter the quantity yourself. The product match stays available. Discounts are checked separately; a coupon does not make a correct weight look wrong.

If a Matched items or Suggested matches line shows the wrong product, open the line's More actions menu (the three dots on the right of the line) and tap Not this item. The line moves to Needs barcode, where you scan or search for the product you actually bought.

If the receipt counts packages but your pantry tracks the item by weight or volume, Put Away leaves the quantity empty and says: The receipt counts packages. Enter the total quantity in the unit shown below. One tub is not one ounce; enter the amount in the displayed unit. Name suggestions also exclude different product forms, such as garlic versus garlic powder; an explicit saved substitute link still requires your choice.

Yes. Leaving Review Receipt keeps the receipt in progress. The Put Away screen shows a continue card for the active receipt, with how many items are still waiting and a countdown such as "Closes in 12 days if left untouched". Tap that card to return to Review Receipt.

A receipt nobody has worked on for 30 days is closed automatically: items you already put away stay in your pantry, and the rest are skipped. Putting away or skipping an item restarts the 30 days.

A receipt stays with the pantry you scanned it in, and its continue card appears only while that pantry is open. If you switch pantries partway through, the item you were putting away is not saved: switch back and continue from that pantry's Put Away screen.

Use Discard receipt only when you want to remove the in-progress receipt from the put-away queue. FreshFolio asks for confirmation before discarding it. If you saved six items from a ten-item receipt, those six stay in inventory when you close the app, finish, or discard the receipt. The four you did not save do not add stock. Saved purchases that still need to sync remain available independently of the receipt.

Yes. Every receipt line you put away teaches FreshFolio which product that line is at that store, whether the line was matched, suggested, or scanned:

• If the store prints an item code for the line, the same item on a later receipt from that store goes straight to Matched items.
• If the line shows only a name, a later receipt from that store lists it under Suggested matches with the product filled in. Check it and save.

So your first receipt from a store needs the most barcode scans, and each trip after that needs fewer. Barcode scanning speeds up in the same way: the first scan of a product creates its Catalog Item, and every later purchase only adds a new Lot, so you don't enter the name, brand, or category again.

Every pantry has exactly one Owner — whoever created it, or whoever it was transferred to. Everyone else who joins is a Member; there is no Admin role, and every invitation joins as a Member. Members collaborate on all shared pantry data. Only the Owner can invite or remove people, cancel pending invitations, transfer ownership, or delete the pantry entirely.

To hand the pantry over, open ⋮ menu → Pantry Settings → Member Management as the Owner, tap the ⋮ button on that member's row, and choose Promote to Owner; you become a Member. Trial accounts can't transfer ownership.

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.

Enter the date manually, use the date picker, or leave it blank if you do not know it. FreshFolio can estimate a date from the item's own default shelf life, then category and storage information. The estimate follows the storage location you put the item in: changing the location while putting an item away updates an estimated date, but never a date you entered or scanned. Putting something in the freezer never gives it a shorter estimate than the pantry or fridge would, and food in the fridge or pantry never gets a freezer-length estimate. Frozen items without a suitable default use 90 days; other perishable items with no suitable default use 14 days. An item marked non-perishable gets neither fallback. Your item's saved default shelf life can come from the product's typical value or your own edit, and it applies to the storage type set on the item.

These are estimates, not a reading of the manufacturer's printed date. Lots saved with a calculated shelf-life date or shortened by an after-opening countdown show an Estimated badge next to the date on the lot card and in Actions. When you enter or scan the printed package date yourself, the Estimated badge is removed. Check the product packaging and confirm the recorded date before saving.

FreshFolio checks for approaching expiration dates on your device when the app starts or returns to the foreground. It uses the notification preference saved in your profile. The default look-ahead window is 5 days, but you can adjust this to 3, 5, or 7 days in Settings → Notifications. The check runs at most once every 6 hours and groups multiple expiring items from the same pantry into one notification.

An item is never flagged as expiring soon on the day you buy it, unless it expires that same day. For items that only keep a few days, the warning starts in the second half of their life instead of a full look-ahead window early: raspberries bought with 5 days to go are flagged about 2 days before their date, not the moment you add them. Longer-lasting items use your full look-ahead.

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

Open a catalog item, swipe left on its lot card, and tap Mark Opened. You can also edit the lot and toggle its opened state. FreshFolio calculates a post-opening date and uses it only if it is earlier than the lot's original expiration date. A shortened lot shows its original and opened dates below the new expiration date; otherwise it shows an Opened badge.

The calculation uses the item's Days After Opening value first. Its catalog estimate updates when the catalog changes, but a number you enter yourself under Smart Automation stays in place until you clear it. If the item has no value, FreshFolio uses the pantry category's default, then a storage-based fallback: 5 days for items requiring refrigeration after opening or 4 days for refrigerated items. Shell eggs without an item-specific Days After Opening value skip the category and storage fallbacks, so opening a shell-egg carton does not shorten its date. Liquid egg products can still have an explicit after-opening value. A lot kept in a freezer location is not shortened when you open it or use part of it: Mark Opened still records the date, but the expiration date stays the same while it is frozen. Always check the product and its storage conditions before use.

Tap the Shopping tab. You can:

• Scan Barcode: Tap the scanner icon to quickly add products by UPC.
• Manual Add: Type an item name in the search field, then choose a match or add it manually.
• Low-Stock Suggestions: When items drop below your Safety Stock threshold, a Low Stock pill with the count appears under the search field. Tap it to review the suggestions and add the ones you want to your list.
• Restock from Pantry: Swipe Left on any catalog item to open a prefilled Add Shopping Item screen, review the quantity, and add it to the list.

Items you've checked off are hidden by default. Tap the Completed pill under the search field to show them again, and tap it once more to hide them.

Yes. Type the name in the shopping list and add it as a custom item. When you Put Away later, FreshFolio asks you to scan the product or enter it manually. A scan of a known product creates its pantry item from the catalog; entering it manually opens the item editor with the name and brand you typed on the list already filled in, and you set or confirm the item's category and unit there. The item is created before you record the quantity, price and expiry. Receipt put-away works the same way for a custom list item matched to a receipt line.

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. Tapping Put Away on an item that has a barcode doesn't ask you to scan it again: FreshFolio creates the pantry item from that product, or opens the item editor filled in from the list item if it can't find the product. An item you typed in without a barcode asks you to scan the product or enter it manually. When the pantry item is new, Put Away starts at that product's own unit, so 1 on the list means one package.

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

4. If a purchase turned out to be the wrong product, swipe Right on it in the Purchased Queue for Substitute (opens Put Away so you can swap in a different product for that queued item), or swipe Left for Delete (dismissing the item from the queue without adding it to your pantry).

Tap an active shopping-list item to open its editor, then adjust the quantity with the minus and plus controls and save your changes. Measured quantities follow your pantry’s unit system. FreshFolio converts your edits to the item’s stored unit when you save; leaving the quantity unchanged keeps the original amount exactly.

Yes — swipe a shopping list row right for Put Away or Substitute, or left for Delete. The same pattern holds elsewhere in the app: a right swipe reveals the constructive action, a left swipe the removing one.

FreshFolio offers three ways to build your digital cookbook:

• Add your own: On Trial, Standard, and Pro, tap the + in the Recipes tab's top bar to type in a recipe yourself — a family favorite, a recipe card, anything that isn't online. You enter a photo, title, category, description, ingredients and instructions.
• Web Import: On Trial, Standard, and Pro, save a recipe straight from your browser — open it, then on iPhone or iPad tap Share and Share to FreshFolio; on Android tap the menu (⋮), Share, and choose FreshFolio. We import the title, ingredients, and steps automatically.
• AI Generation: Trial and Pro can tap Generate at the top of the Recipes tab to generate recipe ideas based on what's currently in the pantry.

Share the recipe page from your browser to FreshFolio (Trial, Standard and Pro). There's no limit on how many recipes you import.

• On iPhone or iPad: open the recipe in Safari, Chrome or Edge, tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen, then tap Share to FreshFolio in the share sheet. Don't see it? Scroll the row of apps and tap More or Edit Actions to turn FreshFolio on.
• On Android: open the recipe in Chrome or Edge, tap the menu (⋮), then Share, and choose FreshFolio from the list. Don't see it? Tap More in the share menu to find FreshFolio.

FreshFolio imports the title, ingredients and steps automatically, along with the photo and a link back to the source. The recipe appears in your Recipes list straight away, reading "Whisking your recipe over from the web..." until the import finishes. Sharing a recipe you already saved doesn't create a second copy. Imported recipes are marked Imported and appear under the Imported filter on the Recipes tab.

Import works with most major recipe sites (for example NYT Cooking, Serious Eats, Food Network and BBC Good Food) and with many food blogs that use the popular recipe-card plugins. It isn't guaranteed for every website on the internet. If the site can't be read, you'll see "Unsupported website. Our parser currently only supports major recipe sites." Some sites also refuse automated access for a while; if a recipe from a supported site won't import, open it in your browser and share it again a little later.

Imported ingredients arrive exactly as the website wrote them. To match them to your pantry (Trial or Pro), open the recipe and tap Smart Ingredient Matching at the bottom. If an imported recipe needs its category confirmed, the Fresh Recipes to Review card on the Actions tab takes you there.

Tap the ? button in the Recipes tab's top bar (How to import recipes) to see the sharing steps any time. The Show me the magic button on an empty Recipes list shows them too.

On Trial, Standard, and Pro, tap the + in the Recipes tab's top bar (Add your own recipe). The Add Your Own Recipe screen opens with these fields, in the same order a recipe is shown:

• Photo (optional) — take or choose a picture, such as the original recipe card.
• Title (required).
• Category — the same categories as the rest of your cookbook. If you skip it, the recipe stays Uncategorized.
• Description (optional).
• Ingredients (required) — type one ingredient per line, however you normally write it ("2 cups flour", "salt to taste"). To group ingredients, end a line with a colon, like "Sauce:" or "For the frosting:" — that line becomes a section heading for the ingredients typed below it, not an ingredient. A counter under the box shows how many lines you've used, for example "Lines: 12 / 200".
• Instructions (optional) — one step per line. Each line becomes one numbered step.

Limits on the ingredients box, so Smart Ingredient Matching can read every line:

• Up to 200 ingredient lines per recipe. Blank lines don't count, but section heading lines do.
• Up to 1000 characters on a single line.

If you go over either limit, the recipe isn't saved: the message under the box (and the one shown when you tap Save) says what to fix — how many lines to remove, or which line to split. A missing title or an empty ingredients box is explained the same way. The title, description and instructions have no line limit.

Tap Save and the recipe opens, showing exactly what you typed — nothing is rewritten. It's marked Your Recipe. If you leave the screen with unsaved changes, FreshFolio asks before discarding them.

The photo uploads once the recipe has reached the server. If that fails — for example while offline — you'll see "Your photo couldn't be uploaded. Add it again once you're back online." Add it again by tapping the recipe's photo on its detail screen.

On the Recipes tab, tap the first button in the row under the search bar (it says All, with a small filter icon and a down arrow). A list opens: All, My Recipes, Imported and AI Generated. Pick My Recipes to see just the recipes you typed in yourself (the ones marked Your Recipe); Imported shows recipes saved from websites, and AI Generated shows recipes made by AI. The button then shows your choice and is tinted. Pick All to see every recipe again.

The list only offers the kinds of recipe you actually have, and the button only appears once your recipes come from two or more of these sources.

Open the recipe, tap the ⋮ menu in its top bar, and choose Edit Recipe. The same form opens with your photo, title, category, description, ingredients and instructions filled in; change anything and tap Save. The same limits apply as when adding: up to 200 ingredient lines and 1000 characters per line, with the line counter under the ingredients box.

Edit Recipe only appears on recipes you added yourself (marked Your Recipe). Recipes imported from a website or made by AI can't be edited this way — you can still change their category and rating in Organize Recipe.

If you change the ingredient lines of a recipe whose ingredients were already matched to your pantry, the old matches are cleared and the recipe shows your new lines. Tap Smart Ingredient Matching again (Trial or Pro) to match them. Changing only the title, category, description or instructions keeps the existing matches.

AI recipe generation has a daily limit; importing recipes from the web doesn't.

• AI recipe generation: up to 5 recipes per pantry per day on Free Trial and Pro. Standard doesn't include AI recipe generation.
• Importing recipes from the web: no daily limit on Free Trial, Standard, or Pro.
• Adding your own recipes: no limit on how many, on Free Trial, Standard, or Pro. Each recipe can have up to 200 ingredient lines, each up to 1000 characters; the add form counts the lines and won't save past either limit, saying why.

Tap the tune icon or ⋮ menu → Organize on a recipe to open Organize Recipe. From there: tap a star to rate 1–5 (tap the same star again, or the clear button, to remove your rating), type a free-text comment below it, and pick a category from the dropdown. Leaving with unsaved changes prompts a confirmation before discarding them.

For imported and AI-generated recipes, FreshFolio proposes a category and shows it as a suggested category: it's a starting point, not a decision, and you can accept or change it here. Your ratings feed the sort options on the Recipes screen, so you can bring your best recipes to the top.

The Actions tab shows a Fresh Recipes to Review card whenever you have AI-generated or imported recipes waiting on a category confirmation. Tapping it jumps straight to the Recipes tab filtered to just those. You can also confirm one at a time from each recipe's own Organize Recipe screen.

The Recipes tab shows your recipes as category tiles (Breakfast, Dinner and so on), with an All tile first and the rest in alphabetical order; each tile shows how many recipes it holds. Tap a tile to see just those recipes. To narrow them down, type in the search field at the top: it matches recipe titles, categories and notes.

To change the order, open a category (or All) and tap the sort button next to the view toggle; it shows the current order, A–Z until you pick another. Choose A–Z, Newest, Quickest (shortest prep plus cook time), Top rated (your own ratings from Organize Recipe), or Most in stock (the largest share of ingredients you have in your pantry, whatever the amount). Your choice is remembered on that device. To see which recipes you can make from what's in stock, amounts included, tap What Can I Cook?.

The Recipes tab always groups your recipes by their primary category (Breakfast, Dinner and so on); there's no setting to turn the grouping off. Tap All to see every recipe in one list, or a category tile to see only that category. If a recipe is in the wrong category, open it and change the category in Organize Recipe.

Tap the large image on a recipe's detail screen. Update Photo lets you take or choose and crop a new picture. Delete or Remove photo clears it, leaving a plain placeholder. If you replaced an imported recipe's picture, Use the original photo restores that picture. An imported recipe keeps its own copy of the source photo and a link back to the source.

To delete the whole recipe, open its ⋮ menu and choose Delete. FreshFolio asks you to confirm by name before permanently removing the recipe and its photo.

When it's available, yes — a Nutrition section on the recipe's detail screen shows Calories, Protein, Carbs, and Fat per serving. If a recipe has calorie data but is missing one of the other values, that field shows N/A rather than a guess. Not every recipe has nutrition data; when none of it is available, the section doesn't appear at all.

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 or typed-in 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.

A nudge telling you a recipe's ingredients haven't been through Smart Ingredient Matching (AI ingredient clean-up) yet. Until they have, the ingredients are raw imported text, which FreshFolio can't reliably match against your pantry — so stock checking and auto-deduction will be patchy for that recipe.

Running the clean-up converts lines like "2 cups low-fat milk" into a structured item, quantity, and unit. It needs an active Trial or Pro plan.

The name shown on the prompt you see where AI recipe features would be, when your plan doesn't include them. It covers pantry-based recipe generation, AI ingredient clean-up, and smart substitutions — all of which need Trial or Pro.

Importing recipes from the web and browsing your collection stay available on every plan, as does the What Can I Cook? screen itself.

A link ties one recipe ingredient to one specific item in your pantry. It's what lets FreshFolio check that item's stock, take the right item down when you cook, and use that item's name and units on your shopping list, instead of guessing which pantry item you mean.

Links start with Smart Ingredient Matching (Trial or Pro). Open a recipe and tap Smart Ingredient Matching at the bottom: it turns a line like "2 cups low-fat milk" into a structured item, quantity and unit. Ingredients that haven't been through it are still raw text, and FreshFolio can't reliably match raw text to your pantry.

Once an ingredient is matched, it ends up in one of three states:

• Linked automatically: its name matches exactly one item in your pantry (Cucumber and Cucumbers count as the same name, as do other singular and plural pairs), or the AI finds a very close match.
• Linked by you: tap the ingredient, use Ingredient Name (Pantry Link) to search for the item and pick it, then tap Save Changes.
• Not linked: FreshFolio couldn't tell which pantry item you mean. This is common, for example when the recipe uses a different name than your pantry does, or when two similar items could fit.

A linked ingredient shows a small link icon next to its name. An ingredient with no link isn't ignored: FreshFolio looks through your pantry for its best guess, and a guess like that appears under Likely In Stock. That works for plenty of ingredients, but a guess can be wrong, so linking the exact item is worth doing whenever the guess is off or you keep several similar items.

Links belong to one pantry. If you use the same recipe in another pantry, run Smart Ingredient Matching and link there too.

Once a recipe's ingredients have been through Smart Ingredient Matching, the recipe's ingredient list is sorted into groups under headings, and each ingredient has a small badge showing how it compares with your pantry. A heading and its badge can be worded slightly differently.

• In Stock (badge In Stock): the ingredient is linked to a pantry item you have, with enough for the recipe.
• Low Stock (badge Low): FreshFolio found the item, but you have less than the recipe needs.
• Likely In Stock (badge Likely, with a small sparkle): FreshFolio thinks you have this but isn't sure. Either the ingredient isn't linked to a pantry item yet, so FreshFolio is matching by name and tags, which is a guess, or it couldn't compare the amounts, for example cups of something your pantry counts by the bottle. Treat it as a good guess, not a confirmed count.
• Essential (badge Essential): not in your pantry, but on your Pantry Essentials list, so FreshFolio assumes you keep it on hand.
• Missing (badge Missing): nothing in your pantry matches it, and it isn't one of your essentials.

A small link icon beside an ingredient's name means it's linked to a specific pantry item. No icon means no link yet. Tap any ingredient to see or change its link.

If you typed section headings in your own recipe (a line ending in a colon, like "Sauce:"), the headings themselves don't appear in this list. Instead, a small label with the section's name shows under the name of each ingredient typed below it.

This is a live, per-recipe read of your stock, separate from and more detailed than the ready-to-cook sorting on What Can I Cook?.

Likely In Stock means FreshFolio found something in your pantry that probably is this ingredient but can't be sure. There are two common causes:

• The ingredient isn't linked to a pantry item yet. Without a link, FreshFolio matches by name and tags, which is a guess. Different names for the same food (scallions and green onions, say) or several similar items in your pantry are the usual reasons it couldn't pick one for you.
• The amounts can't be compared. The recipe may call for cups of something your pantry counts by the bottle, and FreshFolio doesn't know the conversion, so it won't claim you have enough.

To turn the guess into a sure thing, tap the ingredient, use Ingredient Name (Pantry Link) to pick the exact pantry item, and tap Save Changes. A linked ingredient shows a small link icon, and if you have enough it moves to In Stock. If it stays at Likely after you link it, the cause is the second one: the amounts can't be reconciled yet.

Likely isn't wrong, just unconfirmed. Stock checks and cooking still use FreshFolio's best guess for it.

Open the recipe and tap the ingredient. On its detail screen, tap Ingredient Name (Pantry Link), start typing to search, and tap the right result. The item you picked appears under the field with a small link icon, and picking it also renames the ingredient to that item's name. Tap Save Changes to keep the link.

To remove a link, tap the ✕ next to the linked item and save.

This matters because FreshFolio's automatic match is a best guess based on names and tags, and it can pick the wrong thing, or nothing, for vague or unusual ingredients. Once you link an item yourself, FreshFolio uses exactly that item for the stock check, for deducting when you cook, and for the shopping list. It's the fix when a recipe insists you're missing something you definitely have, or keeps picking the wrong one of two similar items.

An ingredient holds one link at a time. You can only open an ingredient's detail screen once the recipe has been through Smart Ingredient Matching.

No. Linking is optional. An ingredient without a link still gets FreshFolio's best guess from your pantry (shown as Likely In Stock), and that guess is used for stock checks and for the list of items taken down when you cook. Before anything is deducted, a confirmation screen lists every pantry item it will use and lets you uncheck any that look wrong.

Link an ingredient when the guess is wrong or can't be made: the recipe says "scallions" and your pantry says "green onions", you keep two similar items (two kinds of milk, say) and want a specific one used, or an ingredient keeps showing as Missing though you have it. Linked ingredients also make the dependable shopping-list entries, because the list uses the linked item's name and units, while an unlinked ingredient is added under the recipe's own wording.

Linking is only possible once the recipe has been through Smart Ingredient Matching (Trial or Pro).

A link belongs to one ingredient in one pantry, and a few things reset it:

• Applying a substitute (Find Substitute, then picking a suggestion) renames the ingredient and removes its link, since it's now a different ingredient.
• Editing the ingredient lines of a recipe you typed yourself clears that recipe's matches. Tap Smart Ingredient Matching again to match the new lines. Changing only the title, category, description or instructions keeps the matches.
• Using the recipe in a different pantry. Links are kept separately for each pantry, so a recipe you matched in one pantry starts unmatched in another until you run Smart Ingredient Matching there. If you switch the pantry on the Ingredient Review screen, links from the old pantry are dropped and matches are worked out again for the new one.
• Removing the link yourself with the ✕ on the ingredient's detail screen.

If a link you set by hand matters, check it on the ingredient's detail screen after any of these.

Tap the ingredient inside the recipe to open its detail screen, correct the quantity, unit, or name, and tap Save Changes.

Two things there are worth knowing:

• Original Recipe Text shows the raw line exactly as it was imported, so you can always see what the recipe actually said even after clean-up has rewritten it into a structured quantity and unit. It's the reference to check against when something looks off.
• Notes is free text for anything you want to remember about that ingredient — "use the good olive oil," "half this next time."

Tap What Can I Cook? at the top of the Recipes tab to open it — a live list of recipes already in your collection that you can make right now, based on what's actually in your pantry. Unlike AI Recipe Generation, which invents brand-new recipes, this searches the recipes you've already saved.

Matching a recipe's ingredients to your pantry needs Smart Ingredient Matching (Trial or Pro). On Standard the screen still opens, but it can't analyze new recipes, so it only has something to show for recipes whose ingredients were matched earlier.

• At the top, Ready to cook shows how many of your saved recipes you can make right now. You can also tap the Use soonest first filter chip here to sort the list by recipes that use the most ingredients expiring in the next few days.
• Below it, the recipes appear in one list, closest to fully stocked first. Each card shows how many ingredients you have (for example "4 of 6 on hand") and names what's Missing: and what's Running low:.
• You might also see special badges or lines on a recipe card:
  • Substitute Available: You have a close match (like skim milk instead of whole milk). It's counted as "low stock" so you know it's not the exact item.
  • Uses expiring items: The recipe uses ingredients from your pantry that are expiring soon. This warning badge appears when you have the Use soonest first sort turned on.
  • Past its date, check first: You have the item, but its earliest lot is past its date. Most date labels are about quality, not safety, so check the item before cooking with it.
• A recipe that is missing too much (less than 60% of its ingredient lines on hand) isn't listed.
• To add what's missing to your shopping list, open the recipe and tap Add to Shopping list. That button appears once the recipe's ingredients have been matched; until then the same spot shows Smart Ingredient Matching.

When several ingredient lines use the same pantry item, their quantities are combined before checking stock. If any of those quantities cannot be converted to the item's unit, the combined quantity cannot be verified.

Results are normally sorted by how close each recipe is to being fully stocked (or by expiring items if Use soonest first is active), and update automatically as you use up or restock ingredients — no extra taps required.

FreshFolio can only match a recipe's ingredients against your pantry once they've been broken down into structured items, quantities, and units — the same AI ingredient clean-up used in Ingredient Review, which requires an active Trial or Pro plan. Tapping Analyze on the What Can I Cook screen runs this clean-up for every saved recipe that hasn't been analyzed yet, so you don't have to open each one individually. Once a recipe has been analyzed for a pantry, it stays analyzed — it will keep reappearing in the right place as your stock changes without being re-analyzed again.

The What Can I Cook screen itself is available on every plan — Standard users can browse it freely. Only the one-time ingredient clean-up behind the Analyze button requires Trial or Pro.

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.

Open the recipe, tap the ingredient you're missing, and tap Find Substitute. FreshFolio suggests 2–4 practical alternatives, ordered from most to least suitable. Each one comes with a short reason explaining why it works in that role, plus a conversion note where the swap isn't 1:1. You can also reach the same feature from the Ingredient Review screen when building a shopping list, so you can swap an item instead of buying it.

Substitution is an AI feature and needs an active Trial or Pro plan, with write access to the pantry.

"No substitute found. Time to improvise!" means the AI could not suggest a sensible alternative. The ingredient may have no close substitute, may be a very specific product, or may have been imported as vague text. For a messy imported ingredient, tap Analyze on Ingredient Review to run AI ingredient clean-up, then try Find Substitute again. Suggestions are general culinary advice: they are not filtered against your pantry or dietary and allergen settings. Check any suggestion against your own restrictions. If none works, add the original ingredient to your shopping list.

No. Substitution suggestions are general culinary recommendations for the ingredient itself, not a search of your pantry — so a suggested alternative may be something you also need to buy.

If you want to cook from what's actually on hand, use What Can I Cook? (at the top of the Recipes tab) instead. That one does work from your real stock and sorts recipes by how close each is to being fully cooked.

Applying one replaces that ingredient's name in the recipe with the substitute — so "buttermilk" becomes "plain yogurt," for example — and unlinks it from whatever catalog item it was previously matched to, since it's now a different ingredient. The remaining suggestions are cleared once you've picked one.

The quantity is not converted for you. Substitutes rarely swap 1:1, so each suggestion includes a short conversion note where the ratio matters — read that before applying, because the recipe keeps whatever amount was already there and won't adjust itself.

Substitution is one of the AI features, so it needs an active Trial or Pro plan — it isn't available on Standard. It also requires write access to the pantry, so it will be unavailable if your subscription has lapsed into Read-Only Mode, or if you're viewing a shared pantry without permission to change it.

Cooking Mode is a step-by-step walkthrough that keeps your screen on so it doesn't dim while you cook. Steps appear one at a time on large, easy-to-read cards and you page through them at your own pace.

Starting it is a two-step flow: tap the cooking button on a recipe and you first land on a confirmation screen listing every pantry item the recipe would use, with everything checked by default. Uncheck anything you don't want deducted — an ingredient you're substituting, or one you're not actually using — then confirm to deduct and move into the steps.

Before you start cooking, not after. Confirming on the ingredient screen deducts immediately and then opens the steps — so if you back out partway through the recipe, the stock has already been taken.

This is deliberate: it means your pantry is correct the moment you commit to cooking, rather than depending on you reaching the final step. If you change your mind, adjust the affected items in your pantry directly.

If you switch pantries, sign out or lose edit access while the deductions are running, FreshFolio stops and tells you how many ingredients were already deducted, for example "2 of 5 ingredients were deducted". Those deductions stay; the rest are not made, and Cooking Mode doesn't open. If the confirmation screen can't load your pantry, it shows Retry instead.

The one expiring soonest. Deduction works through your lots in expiration order, oldest-expiring first, and falls back to the oldest purchase when two share a date — so cooking naturally uses up the food closest to going bad. If one lot doesn't cover the full amount, it continues into the next.

Deducting ingredients happens on the server so that a shared pantry stays consistent between everyone using it. Without a connection there's no safe way to record the deduction, so FreshFolio tells you up front rather than letting you cook and silently losing the inventory change.

You can still open and read the recipe offline — it's only the deduct-and-start-cooking step that needs a connection. If you'd rather cook now, do it and record what you used afterwards once you're back online.

You move strictly one step at a time, in order — there's no way to jump straight to a specific step. The bottom button reads "Next Step" with the current position, like "Next Step (2/8)", and advances you; from the second step onward a Back button appears next to it to go the other way. A progress bar at the top fills in as you move through the recipe. On the last step, the button changes to Done!, and tapping it simply closes Cooking Mode.

Tap the list icon in the top right at any point to open the full Ingredients list in a bottom sheet without leaving Cooking Mode or losing your place in the steps. In your own recipes, section headings you typed (like "Sauce:") show in that list as bold headings above their ingredients.

There's no built-in per-step timer in Cooking Mode today — if a step needs timing, use your phone's own clock or timer app alongside it.

Yes — in list or card view, swipe a recipe right to Add to Meal Plan or left to Delete. In tile view, long press the recipe instead, since there's no room to swipe a tile.

Yes. You can customize how FreshFolio suggests and generates recipes to match your household's needs. Open Settings and tap Recipe Preferences 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.

While FreshFolio uses these preferences to filter and generate recipes, AI systems can make mistakes. Always check the final ingredient list yourself if you have severe allergies or strict dietary requirements.

They look similar but work on different timescales, which is the usual source of confusion:

• Recipe Preferences (Settings → Recipe Preferences) are your saved defaults — preferred servings, maximum cooking time, dietary preferences, allergens, and how many pantry items to send the AI. Set once, applied to every generation.
• The generate screen is per-run. Meal type, cuisine, dietary preferences, time, servings, which pantry to draw from, and Review Items all apply to the one recipe you're about to create, then reset.

So set the things that are always true about your household in Preferences, and use the generate screen for "what am I in the mood for tonight."

It caps how many pantry items get sent to the AI in a single generation, under AI Pantry Integration in Recipe Preferences.

A large pantry doesn't necessarily make better recipes — sending hundreds of ingredients gives the AI a sprawling, unfocused list to work from. Lowering the cap produces tighter, more coherent recipes; raising it gives the AI more to draw on. If you want control over which items get sent rather than just how many, use Review Items on the generate screen.

Yes — that's what Review Items is for. Before generating, open it to see everything from your pantry that's a candidate, and pick exactly what goes to the AI:

• Select All, Top (just the highest-priority items), or Clear All to start from scratch.
• Search by name if the list is long.
• Each item shows how soon it expires, and frozen items are badged, so you can deliberately steer a recipe toward what needs using up.

Your selections apply to that one generation run only — they're not saved as a permanent setting.

On the generate screen (Free Trial and Pro), turn on Use what's expiring to build the recipe around food that's about to go bad. Everything that expires within 7 days is added to the selection, and the AI is told to use the soonest-expiring items first. Items already past their date are never used. When nothing expires within 7 days, the switch is off and reads "Nothing expires within 7 days".

Items are split into two groups: Going to the Chef (what you've selected, what the AI will actually see) and Not Included (everything else). Toggling an item moves it between the two. A Categories filter row above the list lets you narrow by category, showing how many of each category's items are currently selected.

Top doesn't select a fixed number — it selects your saved Max Ingredients to AI limit's worth of the highest-priority items (the same number set under AI Pantry Integration in Recipe Preferences), so raising or lowering that preference changes what Top selects here too.

Recipe generation needs at least 10 eligible items included in Review Items — the button shows "Add 10 items to start the magic" and stays disabled until you reach that count. If your pantry has fewer than 10 items that qualify, or you've deselected too many in Review Items, add or re-select items until the count clears 10.

It's not "no cuisine constraint" — FreshFolio randomly picks 3 of its 11 supported cuisines (American, Asian, French, Greek, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mediterranean, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Thai) and asks the AI to pick from among those three, for variety. If you want a specific cuisine, choose it directly from the dropdown instead of leaving it on Any.

Yes. Every catalog item also has its own Include in Recipes toggle, in the item editor, that sits on top of the category-level default. Left alone, it shows "Auto-enabled (Category: {name})" or "Auto-disabled (Category: {name})", following whatever the category says. Switching it manually shows "Manually included in recipe generation" or "Manually excluded from recipe generation" instead, and stays that way regardless of what the category default is — useful for the one Household-category item that's actually edible, or the one Grocery item you never want suggested. Tap Reset to auto-detected to clear the override and go back to following the category.

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

• Safety Filters: Recipe generation and matching only use items in recipe-eligible categories. Non-food categories such as household supplies or pet food are not recipe-eligible, so their items are excluded from ingredients.
• Include in Recipes overrides: If you store a specialty food ingredient in a non-food category, edit that item and turn on its Include in Recipes toggle to make it eligible anyway. Conversely, turning the same toggle off on a food-category item ensures it's never suggested for cooking. This is the same per-item override described in "Can I override recipe-eligibility for a single item, instead of its whole category?" — it sits on top of, and can flip, whatever the category default would otherwise do.

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.

Tap Add once to save a new meal. While saving, the button shows progress and repeated taps do not create another entry.

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 and UPCItemDB). 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.

Yes, if the barcode already belongs to an item saved in your current pantry. FreshFolio can find that item on your device and use its saved details. Looking up a product that is not already in your pantry needs a connection. If no local item matches while offline, a single scan offers manual entry; automatic product lookup and photo analysis wait until you are online.

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)
• Group By: Tap the Group By pill under the Pantry search field to group your items by expiration date, category, or name.

Yes. Go to ⋮ menu → Pantry Settings → Categories to create, rename, and delete custom categories. A category cannot be deleted while pantry items still use it; move those items to another category first. The editor also prevents another save or delete while the current operation is pending.

Yes. Manage all your storage areas at ⋮ menu → Pantry Settings → Storage Locations. The location editor prevents another save or delete while the current save, confirmation, or deletion is still pending.

Product discovery supplies a category from FreshFolio's shared catalog. New product resolution uses product details and Smart Tags to help choose that category. An unfamiliar product-type tag alone does not force an otherwise supported category to change. You can change the category on your own pantry item by editing it; this does not change the shared catalog's category for everyone.

Automatic product classification can be wrong or incomplete. Open the item, tap edit, and choose the category you want for your pantry. Categories are displayed alphabetically; there is no category-reordering control or list-position rule for changing a product's classification.

You can choose a category for an individual item in its editor and create custom categories under the pantry's Categories settings. The category editor does not expose editable Smart Tags or a rule builder, and it does not let you reorder categories to change automatic classification.

Yes. Go to ⋮ menu → Pantry Settings → Units of Measure to create custom units alongside the built-in global defaults. Custom units are local to your pantry.

A custom unit cannot be deleted while an inventory item or shopping-list row still uses it. Choose another unit for those rows first. Save and delete controls stay disabled while the current operation or delete confirmation is pending.

Almost always because of its category. FreshFolio only treats items in recipe-eligible categories as available ingredients, which is what keeps cleaning supplies, pet food, and toiletries out of your dinner suggestions. An item with no category at all, or one in a category that isn't recipe-eligible, won't appear.

Two fixes:

• Give the item a proper food category (open the item and edit it, or use Item Catalog).
• If a whole category is wrongly excluded, open ⋮ menu → Pantry Settings → Categories, edit that category, and turn on Recipe Eligible. The toggle's own description says it plainly: items in that category get counted as available ingredients when generating or matching recipes.

The first tab, Actions, opens Action Center. Under Eat This First, Past best-by date and Coming up have separate lot counts and lists. Tap the caret on Past best-by date to expand or collapse its lots; it starts collapsed. The quality-date explanation stays inside the card directly below the heading and above the lot count. Tap a past-best-by lot to open Review item in Item Overview. Keep for now quiets its reminder until tomorrow on this device without changing its date or stock. Record use and Discard open the existing stock-action sheets. Value at risk describes stock still held, not recorded waste. This screen is available on every plan. Eat This First is hidden when there are no upcoming lots or unacknowledged past-best-by reminders. When every Action Center task source confirms there is no work, the page shows You’re all caught up and No pantry tasks need attention. instead of per-section All Clear cards. Loading or failed task data does not show this success message, and first-item onboarding keeps its own prompt.

Any active plan — Standard, Pro, or your Trial — gives you full access to 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.
• Consumed vs Wasted trend chart: A line chart of the value of food consumed and wasted, 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.
• Top Stores by Spend: The stores you spent the most at, from the priced purchases you added with a store name.
• Summary: The period and pantry; Spent on purchases, Consumed and Wasted for the period on separate lines, with a note that they measure different things; and how many items are expiring soon.

The current account profile must load before Reports can confirm access. If that initial load fails, Reports shows an error with a retry action. A temporary sync error after the profile has loaded retains the last known access state for that account. A retained profile from a previous account cannot grant Reports access after an account switch.

Reports Summary also shows current counts of past-best-by, upcoming and expired lots, separately from activity in the selected period. These stock counts are not recorded waste.

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 date pill under the search bar to choose a preset (Last 30 Days, Last 12 Months) or set a custom date range. Once you've changed it, tap the ✕ on the pill to go back to Last 12 Months.
• Transaction type: Tap the Filter by type pill next to it to show only adds, uses, or disposals. The pill then shows the type you picked.
• 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.

Transactions are kept for the lifetime of the pantry so the audit trail, reports, item statistics, and price history do not lose older activity. They are removed only when the pantry itself is permanently deleted, including when its owner's account deletion permanently removes that pantry.

Every member of a pantry with an active account receives 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 and one Below Safety Stock list showing remaining quantity for each item and target. This includes empty items with a positive target; items without a positive target are excluded. - Current stock dates: Separate Past best-by, Expired and Coming up lists. Each group counts every matching lot and shows up to ten, with a showing-N-of-M note when shortened. Upcoming dates use your own 3, 5 or 7-day alert lead time, capped at half the lot's shelf life, and skip purchase day unless due today. Wording distinguishes Best by quality dates and Use by safety dates. Post-open dates govern; opened lots get no extra best-by days. These stock snapshots are separate from recorded waste. Keeping a reminder quiet on one device does not remove stock from the email. Quantities follow the pantry unit system and each item's own units. - Weekly Activity: What you spent on purchases, the cost of stock consumed, and the value of stock wasted, with a note when some items were added without a price. - Top 3 Most Consumed and Top 3 Most Wasted: the three items with the highest consumed dollar value, showing the cost followed by the consumed quantity in parentheses (for example $12.34 (2 lb)), and the three items with the highest wasted dollar value, also showing cost followed by quantity in parentheses.

Reversed entries are left out, and corrected prices are used, the same way as in Reports. To stop the email, turn off Weekly Summary Email under Settings → Notifications (in the Email section), or use the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of any summary, which opens a page showing the address (partly hidden) and an Unsubscribe button. The setting is per account and covers all your pantries; turning it back on in the app restarts it.

A few features work together here, and which ones apply depends on your plan:

On every plan, Expiration Alerts (Settings → Notifications) warn you 3, 5, or 7 days before something expires, so the earliest useful step is just making sure those are turned on. The What Can I Cook? screen (tap What Can I Cook? at the top of the Recipes tab) also surfaces saved recipes you can already make from what's in your pantry, which is often the fastest way to use something up before it goes bad. A recipe only appears there after its ingredients are matched to your pantry with a one-time Analyze, which needs a Trial or Pro plan.

With an active paid plan (Standard, Pro, or your Trial), Reports & Insights adds Top Wasted Items — a ranked list of exactly what you dispose of most, by value — and a Waste Reason Breakdown showing whether it's mostly expiring, spoiling, or going missing. That's the most direct answer to "what should I use" if you have it: it tells you precisely where your waste is concentrated instead of guessing.

Your pantry inventory, shopping lists, and activity are visible to you and members invited to that pantry. Barcode-linked product details and photos you contribute may also appear in FreshFolio's community product catalog for other users. FreshFolio uses service providers to run syncing, billing, and AI features; the information sent depends on the feature you use. FreshFolio does not sell personal information. See the Privacy Policy for details about processing and sharing.

Open Settings, tap your name and email at the very top to open your profile, then scroll to the Delete Account section. You can also visit our Account Deletion Page. Enter your current sign-in email and use the secure confirmation link to choose either immediate permanent deletion or immediate deactivation followed by permanent deletion after 30 days.

If you are the owner of a shared pantry, deleting your account also permanently removes that pantry and revokes access for its members. If you are a member but not the owner, only your access and user identifier are removed; the pantry, shared media, and transaction history 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 Catalog Item, with its own expiration date, quantity, and storage location.

Put Away is how a purchase becomes stock in your pantry. Open the Pantry tab and tap Put Away. Search for a product, scan its barcode, or select one waiting in the Purchased Queue after you checked it off on your shopping list. Confirm its quantity, expiration date, and storage location, then save it. A checked shopping-list item is still waiting to be put away until you complete that step.

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.

Product-type tags from the shared catalog help FreshFolio classify products and match recipe ingredients. They are not brands or free-text categorization rules. The app's category editor does not currently offer a Smart Tags editor; change an individual item's category in its item editor instead.

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 at ⋮ menu → Pantry Settings → Pantry Essentials.

A step-by-step recipe walkthrough that keeps the device screen on while cooking. FreshFolio asks you to confirm ingredient deductions before the cooking steps begin; it does not wait until the last step to deduct them.

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