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Getting started: your first week with ShelfCount

You don’t have to set up everything at once. Here’s the arc that works best: set up your storage locations, tell us where your item list lives and bring it in (or start from a sample catalog), connect your POS, turn your menu into recipes, run your first count, and read your first food-cost report. Most cafés are counting inventory by the end of week one.

Day 1: what you start with

When you create your account, ShelfCount starts your 14-day free trial and sets up a starter kit for you: the common kitchen units (grams, ounces, pounds, milliliters, fluid ounces, gallons, cases, bottles, bags, and more) and a handful of starter categories (Dairy, Dry Goods, Produce, Beverage, Packaging). You can rename, add, or remove categories any time from the Categories page.

Step 1: add your storage locations

A location is anywhere you physically store product: walk-in, dry storage, bar, front-of-house fridge, freezer. Go to Locations and add each place you’d stand in while counting. Counts are done one location at a time, so locations should match how you actually walk the building.

Step 2: bring in your inventory items

The fastest way in is a file you already have. If your items live in another app like MarketMan, export them; if they live in a spreadsheet, upload the Excel file directly or save it as a CSV. Then upload it on the Import page. You don’t need to rename columns to match ours — we read the columns you have and stage every row for you to check. Nothing is saved until you approve it. See Importing your data for what you can upload and how review works.

No list yet? Start from the sample catalog during setup — real items, units, and recipes you can edit — and adjust as you go. Either way, you can also add items by hand on the Inventory Items page. For each item you’ll set:

If your sheet is an unusual shape and you’d rather line the columns up yourself, download our template, fill it in, and upload that instead. It’s the fallback; the plain upload above handles most files without it.

  • What you buy it as: the purchase unit (a case, a bag, a gallon) and what it costs.
  • What you count it as: the unit you’ll use on the shelf (bottles, bags, each).
  • The pack size: how the purchase unit breaks down, like 1 case = 12 bottles of 750 mL.

Take your time with units. Costing, counting, and ordering all depend on them, and they’re annoying to fix later. See Items, units, pack sizes, and costs for a plain-language walkthrough.

Tip: start with your 30–50 highest-spend items (dairy, proteins, coffee, packaging). Add the long tail later. Your first count is useful even if half your items aren’t in the system yet.

Step 3: add your team

An admin can add team members from Settings. You create each person with a name, email, a temporary password, and a role; they’re asked to set their own password the first time they sign in. Roles keep things safe: staff can count inventory and scan receipts but never see costs, managers run purchasing and reports, and admins also manage the team. Details in Your team and roles.

Step 4: run your first count

Go to Counts and start a count for one location. Walk the shelf, enter what you see, and submit. A few things to know:

  • Leaving an item blank means skip it. Only enter 0 if the shelf is actually empty.
  • Counts save as you go, so you can put your phone down and come back. Unfinished drafts expire after 24 hours.
  • Once submitted, a count is locked (managers can void a bad one).

The full guide is in Counting inventory.

After week one

Once counting feels routine, add the rest at your own pace: