Getting Started

This walkthrough uses the fictional business Oak Creek Goods, a small-batch food producer in Laramie, Wyoming. Its owner is Bonnie Macfarlane and its business timezone is America/Denver. The examples follow a Cherry Choco Trail Mix workflow from purchasing through sale; use the flow, not necessarily the sample quantities.

By the end, you will know how to navigate the app, create an Item, choose tracking, add inventory, find it again, and understand where purchasing, production, sales, and access control fit next.

1. Navigate Indietory

After signing in, open Home to see the Workspaces available to you. Each Workspace home shows the Modules your Role can access. On smaller screens, open the navigation menu first.

Many Modules use a list-and-detail pattern: search the list, open a record, then return to the list. If a Workspace or Module is missing, your Role may not include access.

2. Review Business Profile and Profile

Business Profile holds shared workspace information such as the business name, time zone, contact information, and address. Your Profile holds your display name, email, password controls, company, and Role.

Business vs. personal: Business Profile belongs to the shared workspace. Profile belongs to your individual user account.

3. Create or review Items

Open Items and review or create the Item Definitions used by the example: RM-CHERRY-DRY / Dried Tart Cherries, RM-CHOC-NAT / Natural Color Milk Chocolate Buttons, INT-CHERRYCHOCO-BULK / Cherry Choco Trail Mix, Bulk, and FG-CHERRYCHOCO-8 / Cherry Choco Trail Mix, 8 oz. The ingredient and intermediate UOM is kg; the finished good UOM is ea.

Choose a stable Item Code. The UOM and Tracking Type are structural decisions that can become restricted once the Item has history. For a Lot + Container example, use RM-ALMOND-RU / Roasted Almonds, No Salt so its physical Container can be labeled and moved independently.

New lot-tracked inventory for an Item with No Testing Required is created as Available. Without that setting, it is created as Quarantined in manual receiving, Purchase Receipts, and production output. Oak Creek uses RM-CHOC-NAT as the testing-required example.

4. Create supporting records

Create Locations for RECV / Receiving, QC-HOLD / QC Hold, ST-A01 / Storage A-01, PROD-01 / Production Bench, and ST-B01 / Storage B-01. Add the fictional Supplier Vendor HIGHPLAINS / High Plains Ingredients. Create Customers later if retaining them for Quick Sales is useful; a Quick Sale customer is optional.

Locations can represent a room, rack, shelf, cabinet, bin, staging area, or another real place. A Vendor can be a Supplier, Manufacturer, or both, which keeps receiving and Lot records connected to reusable business identities instead of free-text names.

5. Plan and receive an ingredient order

Create Purchase Order 1 for HIGHPLAINS / High Plains Ingredients. Use Order Date 2026-09-02, Expected Date 2026-09-04, supplier reference HPI-260902-1047, currency USD, and the note “Cherry Choco Trail Mix ingredient order.” Add the five ingredient Items: Roasted Almonds, No Salt; Large Roasted Cashews, No Salt; Roasted Pepitas, No Salt; Dried Tart Cherries; and Natural Color Milk Chocolate Buttons. Use plausible kg quantities for the planned batch.

When the stock arrives, create a Purchase Receipt against the receivable PO lines. Record what arrived rather than reconstructing the order. Receive ordinary ingredients at RECV. The RM-CHOC-NAT Lot begins Quarantined because it requires testing; keep its Container at QC-HOLD while quality review is needed, then make it Available through the actual Lots workflow before production.

Indietory creates inventory at the Item’s tracking level. You do not need to build separate Item, Lot, and Container records in separate areas. Print a label for the received RM-ALMOND-RU Lot + Container, attach it to the physical Container, and scan it when you later need to find or move it.

6. Find, move, or correct inventory

Use View Inventory to find the received RM-ALMOND-RU Container, review its current quantity, Location, status, cost, source, and history, and reopen the detail.

Use Move Inventory when the physical Location changes. Quantity does not change. Use Adjust Inventory when the recorded quantity is wrong; it records a correction instead of overwriting history.

For example, move the released almond Container from RECV to ST-A01 with Move Inventory. The physical Container moves; the action does not create a new inventory record. If the recorded quantity is wrong, use Add / Subtract Quantity or Set Quantity in Adjust Inventory. Inventory History records the resulting event.

7. Define the two production stages

Create two Production Instructions, then release their revisions. The first, Cherry Choco Trail Mix, Bulk, is a Batch instruction that consumes the five ingredients and produces 1.362 kg of INT-CHERRYCHOCO-BULK. The second, Cherry Choco Trail Mix, 8 oz, is an Assembly instruction that consumes that bulk intermediate, six Black Stand-Up Pouches, six Cherry Choco Product Labels, and one Shipping Case to produce 6 ea of FG-CHERRYCHOCO-8.

8. Plan, produce, and store finished inventory

Create a Production Order from each released instruction when the work is planned. Reserve only valid inventory; reservations set stock aside but do not consume it.

In Produce Inventory, record actual ingredient use and the bulk intermediate output first. Then record the finished assembly/packout: consume the intermediate and packaging, produce six finished pouches, pack them into the shipping case, and apply the Indietory finished inventory/container label to the case. Move the finished Container to ST-B01 when it is stored.

9. Record a Quick Sale

Use Quick Sales for a simple sale that does not need a full order, shipping, invoicing, or payment workflow. For the Oak Creek example, select an Available FG-CHERRYCHOCO-8 inventory record and sell one Cherry Choco Trail Mix, 8 oz pouch at $9.99. A Customer is optional.

Quick Sales deduct inventory and retain its cost for COGS and gross-profit information. Indietory does not process payment; continue using your payment or POS service.

Quick Sales can include several lines and retain the sale identity, date, optional Customer, notes, revenue/cost details, and relationship to the inventory used. If a completed sale was entered incorrectly, void it while its original inventory records can still be restored safely; the sale remains in history as voided.

10. Review the connected record history

The connected Oak Creek Goods story is Vendor → Purchase Order → Purchase Receipt → received inventory → label → Move Inventory → quality review where applicable → Production Instructions → Production Orders → Produce Inventory → intermediate → finished case → Move Inventory → Quick Sale.

Use Inventory History to review the receipt, movements, consumption, intermediate output, finished output, and sale. Use View Inventory for the stock that remains now.

11. Add teammates deliberately

Use Roles to define access, then Users to invite people and assign roles. Each person should have an individual account. A User can maintain up to two concurrent devices; an additional sign-in can end the longest-inactive session.

Your plan determines how many Users can be active. Deactivating someone preserves their historical connection to records without leaving normal access enabled.

12. Bringing over existing inventory

You do not necessarily need to rebuild every existing record by hand before evaluating Indietory. Businesses arrive from spreadsheets, another inventory system, handwritten records, ecommerce exports, or a combination of sources.

Because those sources are structured differently, there is not one import format that fits every operation. For a small initial working set or questions about a larger migration, email support@indietory.com with the source you use and the records you need to bring over. Migration assistance depends on the source data and subscription context.

You are ready

If you have created an Item, added or received inventory, and found it in View Inventory, you understand the basic model. Use Core Concepts for the why, a Module page for a particular screen, or Guides for a cross-module job.