Importing your data
Most of what you need to set up already lives in a file somewhere — another inventory app, a spreadsheet, an old price list. Upload it and ShelfCount reads the columns for you. You review everything before a single row is saved.
What you can upload today
You can import three things, each from its own file: your inventory items, your vendors, and your recipes. A CSV or an Excel file (.xlsx) both work — upload the Excel file straight from your spreadsheet, or export a CSV from another app. You don’t have to rename columns to match ours. We match the columns you have, whatever they’re called, and figure out units, pack sizes, and which ingredient points at which item.
Start with your items list. Once your items exist, recipes and vendors have something to attach to, so importing them in that order saves you a step. Files can be up to 2 MB.
Coming from MarketMan? Export your items and upload the file as-is. ShelfCount recognizes MarketMan’s column layout and lines everything up for you, so there’s no renaming or rearranging before the review step.
Tip: start with your 30–50 highest-spend items (dairy, proteins, coffee, packaging) and add the long tail later. A partial list is enough to run a useful first count.
What “review” means
An upload never writes straight to your catalog. We stage every row on a review screen with what we read from each column and what we matched it to. You fix anything that looks off, drop rows you don’t want, and only then approve. Nothing is saved until you approve it — so a messy file can’t quietly break your numbers.
The template fallback
The plain upload handles most files on its own. If your sheet is an unusual shape, or you’d simply rather line the columns up yourself, download the template from the import step, fill it in, and upload that instead. It maps one-to-one to our fields and commits directly, so keep it for the cases where the automatic match struggles.
Starting from a sample catalog
No file to bring in? During setup you can start from a sample coffee-shop catalog instead — real items, units, and recipes you can edit. There’s no fake sales data; it’s just a running start you can reshape into your own menu.
Photos of paper lists
If your counts live on paper, photograph the list instead of retyping it. On the import step choose Photos of a list, add up to five photos, and we read the items straight off the page. It builds your inventory items only — recipes and vendors still come from a CSV or Excel file.
Reading handwriting is never perfect, so this stages every line for review just like a file does — expect to fix a few readings, especially on messier writing, and nothing saves until you approve it. It works best on a printed or neatly written list shot straight-on in good light. Photos must be JPEG, PNG, or WebP; iPhones often shoot HEIC, so set Camera → Formats to “Most Compatible” (or export as JPEG) first.
For invoices and receipts, photo capture works a bit differently — see Receipts and invoice scanning.
Questions
Stuck on an export or not sure how a column will be read? Email hello@insidermanagement.net and we’ll help you get it in.