This week I take a look at the shopping list and inventory features available on BeerSmith Web. These features were added in March of 2022 to the web based version which you can try for free on BeerSmithRecipes.com from any computer, tablet or phone. The web based version provides a common view of inventory and shopping that can be used by multiple web users on the same account.
Note: There is also a video on the Shopping List and Inventory Features in BeerSmith Web here.
Shopping List View
Shopping List view lets you build a shopping list from your current ingredients or directly from a recipe. To get to shopping list view, log into your BeerSmithRecipes account and go to the Inventory->Shopping List selection on the menu bar, or use the shortcut bar on the left under Inventory/Shopping to bring up the shopping list.
From the shopping list you can directly add ingredients using the add hop, add yeast, etc… buttons at the top of screen. Any item from your various Ingredients views can be added this way. You can also edit any item’s price or quantity in the shopping list by simply clicking on it. Using the small menu button to the right of any item you can delete individual items or add a single item to inventory.
There is a mail button which lets you mail your shopping list back to yourself or send it to your local homebrew store. This makes it easy to send an order which some stores will fulfill for you for easy pickup. A Print button lets you print your shopping list to take it to the store, and of course you can also access the shopping list view from your phone at any time by just logging into BeerSmithRecipes.com.
Once your purchases are made you can click the To Inventory button at the very top of the shopping view to add items to inventory. For each item a checkbox and amount is shown. Only the checked items will be added to inventory using the quantities you specify here. Finally you can empty the shopping list entirely using the Empty button at the top of the view.
Inventory View
The inventory view is available under Inventory->Inventory or from the shortcut bar on the left when working with recipes. Again using the add buttons at the top you can add any item from your Ingredients database to inventory easily.
Click on any inventory item to change its price, total inventory or total inventory value. There is also a reorder threshold that will highlight an item if if current inventory is below your reorder amount. You can use the small menu item to the right of any item to delete an item or add it to the shopping list. Using the print button you can create a printout of your current inventory.
Recipe Shopping and Inventory Features
To make it easy to work with the shopping list and inventory, BeerSmith web also includes a few key features tying the inventory and shopping list features to your recipes. First, if you start at your Recipes listing view, you can click on the small menu button to the right of any recipe and select the Add to Shopping List to add all of the ingredients from a recipe to the shopping list. BeerSmith will combine amounts from multiple recipes, so it is easy to get a combined list of items in your shopping list for the upcoming recipes you wish to brew.
On the same menu there is a button to Remove from Inventory. This attempts to match the recipes ingredients and shows a dialog so you can adjust quantities and items removed. This is done with a similar checkbox/quantity listing so you can see which ones were matched and also adjust the quantities versus what is inventory.
Finally if you open a recipe for editing, there is also a button next to the various Add Hop, Add Water, etc… buttons called Update Prices. Clicking on this button will force the program to match all the ingredients in the recipe against the existing prices in your inventory view and update the prices in the recipe. Assuming all the items are in inventory, this will give you an updated total cost for the recipe based on the costs of items in inventory.
I hope you enjoy the web based shopping list and inventory features. Thank you for joining me this week on the BeersSmith blog – please subscribe to the newsletter or listen to my video podcast for more great material on homebrewing.