A Reader Asked for This One
An expiry date printed on a jar tells you one thing: how long it lasts unopened. Once you open it, that date stops being the useful one.
Most of us know this vaguely. The jar of pesto that was fine in October is not fine in December. The bag of flour that has been open since spring. The sauce at the back of the fridge door that nobody can date. With larger packages especially, food gets used gradually, over weeks — and the printed date has nothing to say about any of it.
So InvenDo now lets you record the date you opened something, separately from the date printed on the package.
How it works
When you open a product, you record that date in InvenDo and set how long it stays good once opened. The app tracks that period and reminds you before it runs out — the same way it already reminds you about printed expiry dates.
It means the two clocks are handled separately, because they genuinely are two different things. The unopened date matters while the jar sits in the cupboard. The opened date matters from the moment you break the seal.
You can read more about setting it up in Track Shelf Life After Opening.
Where the idea came from
We did not think of this one.
Most of what goes into InvenDo starts the same way: someone writes to us and describes a problem they are having at home. Sometimes it is a small thing. Sometimes, like this, it is something that turns out to matter to a lot of people once you start paying attention to it.
Opened-date tracking had been requested by users for a while before we built it. After the update shipped, this letter arrived from a reader in Poland. He had wanted the feature for a long time, he said, but had never quite got round to asking for it — he had assumed it was too much to ask.
We are publishing it with his permission, translated from Polish.
Oh!!! What a surprise!! 🎁 … after the latest updates, where a new feature appeared for recording the date a product was opened — one that should be used or consumed within a certain time.
The development team must have the power to read the dreams of this brilliant app’s users, because I had wanted to suggest such a feature for a long time, but I treated it more as asking for the moon … and here you are .. such a gift. 🎁
Thank you very, very, very much for this convenience. An extraordinarily useful feature.
In practice, a lot of products get opened one day, and with larger packages their use stretches out over time. And now there’s some control over it, so you don’t end up in hospital having your stomach pumped 🚑 😀.
There is no !! equally good, well-thought-out and functional app for taking charge of supplies of food, household chemicals, medicines or anything else.
You are light years ahead of the competition. 🏆
My deepest respect to the entire development team.
Warm regards, Immensely grateful
— An InvenDo user in Poland. Letter translated from Polish and published with permission.
The original letter, in Polish:
Witam serdecznie.
Och !!! Jaka niespodzianka !! 🎁…po ostatnich aktualizacjach , gdzie pojawiła się nowa funkcja rejestrowania daty otwarcia produktu , który w określonym czasie powinien, być zużyty czy skonsumowany.
Chyba zaspół programistów ma moc odczytywania marzeń użytkowników tej rewelacyjnej aplikacji, bo już od dawna chciałem zasygnalizować wprowadzenie takiej możliwości, ale to raczej traktowalem jako ” gwiazdkę z nieba ” …a tu masz ..taki prezent.🎁
Bardzo, bardzo, bardzo dziękuję za tą dogodność. Niezwykle użyteczną funkcję.
W praktyce sporo produktów narusza się któregoś dnia i przy większych opakowaniach ich zużycie rozciąga się w czasie. A teraz jest nad tym jakaś kontrola , by nie wylądować w szpitalu na płukaniu żołądka 🚑 😀.
Nie ma !! równie dobrej, przemyślanej i funkcjonalnej aplikacji , by zapanować nad zapasami żywności, chemii, lekarstw czy innych produktów.
Wyprzedziliście konkurencję o lata świetlne.🏆
Niskie ukłony przed całym zespołem programistów.
Pozdrawiam serdecznie Ogromnie wdzięczny
Letters like this are the reason the request list is worth keeping.
If there is something InvenDo does not do that you wish it did, tell us. Not every request becomes a feature, and some take a long while. But the list is real, we read all of it, and a surprising amount of what is in the app today started as somebody’s message describing a small everyday problem.
You can reach us through Contact Us, or from the Help section inside the app.
InvenDo is free to download on Google Play and the App Store, with a Lifetime option if you’d rather pay once.