User Guide

About FoodRem

FoodRem is an Inventory Management System that empowers small food and beverage (F&B) restaurant managers to manage inventory and obtain insights from inventory data. As a restaurant manager, you can easily view and edit your inventory during your daily operations. Utilize FoodRem’s flexible tagging system to help you organize your inventory according to your business needs. Finally, streamline your business decisions by deriving insights from your inventory usage through FoodRem’s statistics – you can keep track of metrics such as food wastage amount if you wish!

With a focus on efficiency, you can interact with FoodRem without ever reaching for your mouse or moving away from your keyboard! With a focus on user-friendliness, FoodRem is easy to learn!

This User Guide provides an in-depth documentation so you can easily use and integrate FoodRem into your day-to-day inventory management operations. It covers how to launch FoodRem, core FoodRem features and commands, common terms and definitions used in FoodRem, and some troubleshooting recommendations. Head over to How to use the User Guide to get started!

Table of Contents

1. About FoodRem
2. Table of Contents
3. Features
   1. Inventory Management System
   2. Inventory Analysis
4. How to use the User Guide
   1. Admonition Boxes
   2. Other Notation
5. Installation
6. Quick Reference Guide
   1. Layout
   2. Key Definitions
      1. Item
      2. Tag
      3. Flags
      4. Placeholders
   3. Command Format
   4. Trying your first command
7. Commands
   1. Item Commands
      1. Create a new item: new
      2. Search for an item: find
      3. List all items: list
      4. Sort all items by an attribute: sort
      5. View the information of an item: view
      6. Increment the quantity of an item: inc
      7. Decrement the quantity of an item: dec
      8. Edit the information of an item: edit
      9. Add a remark to an item: rmk
      10. Delete an item: del
   2. Tag Commands
      1. Create a new tag: newtag
      2. List all tags: listtag
      3. Tag an item: tag
      4. Untag an item: untag
      5. Rename a tag: renametag
      6. Filter by a tag: filtertag
      7. Delete a tag: deletetag
   3. Statistics Command
      1. Display statistics: stats
   4. General Commands
      1. Receive help during usage: help
      2. Reset the application: reset
      3. Exit FoodRem: exit
8. Command Summary
   1. Item Commands
   2. Tag Commands
   3. Statistics Command
   4. General Commands
9. Troubleshooting
10. FAQ
11. Acknowledgements
12. Glossary

Features

There are two core features that FoodRem provides:

• Inventory Management System
• Inventory Analysis Tool

Inventory Management System

FoodRem allows you to track your inventory during your daily operations.

1. Quickly create, view, edit, and remove your available inventory.
2. Sort your inventory items by name, quantity The amount/count of item(s) kept track by FoodRem.
   Click to view glossary , unit, bought date Date where an item was purchased. Bought date is in the format “day-month-year”, represented in the “dd-mm-yyyy” format.
   Click to view glossary , expiry date Date where an item spoils, expires, or becomes unusable. Expiry date is in the format “day-month-year”, represented in the “dd-mm-yyyy” format.
   Click to view glossary , price and remarks.
3. Tag items Represents a thing that is stored and kept track by FoodRem.
   Click to view glossary in your inventory using an efficient tagging system where you can create, rename and delete existing tags The main method of categorizing items in FoodRem. A tag may be attached to zero or more items.
   Click to view glossary .
4. Filter your inventory items by item name and tag.

Inventory Analysis

FoodRem tracks data that helps you streamline your business decisions through statistics:

1. Find out how much cost was incurred due to food wastage.
2. Track your top 3 most expensive items.
3. View your items that are expiring soon.

How to use the User Guide

Thank you for choosing FoodRem! We are delighted to have you as a user and we aim to serve you and your business well!

If you have not installed FoodRem head over to the Installation section.

Once FoodRem is installed, you can head over to the section Quick Reference Guide which covers the basics of using FoodRem. This includes:

• FoodRem’s Layout
• What Items and Tags are in FoodRem
• What Flags and Placeholders are
• FoodRem’s Command format
• Trying out your first FoodRem command

If you are an experienced user, you can refer to the Command Summary for a quick overview of all of FoodRem’s commands.

If you are stuck, refer to the section on Troubleshooting or FAQ.

You can also refer to the Glossary for definitions of commonly used terms in FoodRem.

Admonition Boxes

Throughout this guide, you may find coloured boxes containing highlighted pieces of text. These are known as admonition boxes, or simply, admonitions Admonition boxes (or simply “admonitions”) are coloured boxes containing highlighted pieces of text.
Click to view glossary . Please take note of the content within.

Icon	Meaning
	Something you should keep in mind.
	Something you might find useful.
	Something that provides information useful in that context.
	Something you should be cautious about.
	Something you should pay a lot of attention to.

Other Notation

Besides icons, there are also some special notations that are used in this guide:

• Links in blue point to other sections in this document, or places on the internet.
• Words with a dotted underlineA summary of the glossary entry will appear here. represent terms, which when clicked, take you to the corresponding entry in the glossary section at the end of this guide.

Installation

If you haven’t installed FoodRem, simply follow these steps to set it up:

1. Download and install Java 11 on your computer
2. Download the latest foodrem.jar file from our releases page
3. Copy the jar file to an empty folder. This will be your home folder for FoodRem
4. Double-click on the jar file to launch FoodRem

Congratulations! You now have FoodRem set up.

Quick Reference Guide

This section covers all you should know about FoodRem, as well as a guided tutorial. Of special note is the Key Definitions and Command Format sections, which covers essential knowledge to using FoodRem’s features.

Layout

When you launch FoodRem, FoodRem appears on your screen as a Graphical User Interface A Graphical User Interface is a graphics-based interface that uses icons, menus and a mouse (to click on the icon or pull down the menus) to manage interaction with the system. In FoodRem, this presents as the window that appears when launching it.
Click to view glossary , or GUI. Let’s look at the layout of the different components of FoodRem.

FoodRem’s GUI consists of a single main window, as well as the Help Window A pop-up window containing help information, shown only after calling a help command.
Click to view glossary . The main window consists of three components:

1. Command Input Box
2. Item List Box
3. Command Output Box

The following picture of the main window shows the three components, numbered accordingly:

Besides the main window, FoodRem also has the Help Window. It is not part of the main GUI and is only shown after a Help Command is run.

The Help Window looks like the following:

Key Definitions

Item

An Item Represents a thing that is stored and kept track by FoodRem.
Click to view glossary in FoodRem represents something in your inventory. This can be an ingredient, a piece of equipment, and more. Feel free to include or exclude certain attributes for each item, although you must minimally provide a name for the item.

The following are the attributes stored for each item:

• Item name
• Item quantity The amount/count of item(s) kept track by FoodRem.
  Click to view glossary
• Item unit (unit of measurement e.g. kg, packets)
• Item bought date Date where an item was purchased. Bought date is in the format “day-month-year”, represented in the “dd-mm-yyyy” format.
  Click to view glossary
• Item expiry date Date where an item spoils, expires, or becomes unusable. Expiry date is in the format “day-month-year”, represented in the “dd-mm-yyyy” format.
  Click to view glossary
• Item price
• Item remarks
• Item tags The main method of categorizing items in FoodRem. A tag may be attached to zero or more items.
  Click to view glossary

FoodRem Items are unique by name and case-sensitive. This means you cannot add two or more items of the same name.

Restrictions for all attributes can be found in the Placeholders section.

Tag

A Tag in FoodRem serves as a means to categorise and filter items. These tags are also unique and case-sensitive.

We can tag multiple items with the same tag and each item can have multiple tags. These Tags are optional.

Feel free to add tags as you see fit to organize your inventory. Examples of how you may use a tag can include:

• Categorizing food items, e.g. Vegetable, Herb, Condiment, Meat
• Marking where the item is stored, e.g. Fridge, Cupboard, Shelf
• Noting its perishability, e.g. Perishable, Non-Perishable

Tags can be renamed and these changes would be reflected on all items immediately.

FoodRem Tags are unique by name and case-sensitive. This means you cannot add two or more tags of the same name.

Flags

Flags are delimiters A sequence of one or more characters for specifying the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text.
Click to view glossary that enable FoodRem to distinguish different parameters Parameters identify values passed into your Commands. For example, when calling add n/ItemName, the parameter here is n/ItemName.
Click to view glossary without ambiguity.

You would put in the corresponding Placeholder immediately after each flag.

Please refer to the subsequent Command Format section to see how Flags and Placeholders are used together.

Placeholders

Placeholders in this User Guide refers to the UPPER_CASE words that can be replaced by valid user input supplied. These placeholders follow immediately after a Flag.

Please refer to the subsequent Command Format section to see how Flags and Placeholders are used together.

Command Format

You will encounter FoodRem commands A feature or function that FoodRem can perform.
Click to view glossary throughout this User Guide. Before you delve into the different commands in Commands, let’s learn what a command consists of.

Here is an example:

A command consists of:

1. Command Word: Tells FoodRem what action you wish to execute. These actions are covered in Commands.
2. Flags: Distinguishes between inputs. A flag is usually followed by a placeholder.
3. Placeholders: Represents data that you wish to input. Replace this with valid data. For example, ITEM_NAME in n/ITEM_NAME can be replaced with n/Potato.

Trying your first command

To let you become more familiar with FoodRem, let’s practice executing some commands A feature or function that FoodRem can perform.
Click to view glossary .

To start off, let’s try out the new command! This command lets you add an Item to FoodRem.

One of the available commands in FoodRem is the command to create a new item.

Format: new n/ITEM_NAME [qty/QUANTITY] [u/UNIT] [bgt/BOUGHT_DATE] [exp/EXPIRY_DATE] [p/PRICE] [r/REMARKS]

What does the format mean?

The first word of every command allows FoodRem to distinguish different commands.

• new tells FoodRem that this is the command to create a new item
• Flags such as n/ and qty/ are delimiters A sequence of one or more characters for specifying the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text.
  Click to view glossary that enable FoodRem to distinguish different parameters Parameters identify values passed into your Commands. For example, when calling add n/ItemName, the parameter here is n/ItemName.
  Click to view glossary supplied by you without ambiguity
• Placeholders such as ITEM_NAME and QUANTITY shows you what you should place in each portion of the command

Notice that there is a pair of square brackets [] surrounding some parameters Parameters identify values passed into your Commands. For example, when calling add n/ItemName, the parameter here is n/ItemName.
Click to view glossary like qty/QUANTITY in the format. This indicates that the parameter is optional. Each of these placeholders Placeholders in FoodRem refers to the UPPER_CASE words that appear after flags in commands that can be replaced by user input supplied. For example in n/ITEM_NAME, ITEM_NAME is a placeholder.
Click to view glossary in the parameters Parameters identify values passed into your Commands. For example, when calling add n/ItemName, the parameter here is n/ItemName.
Click to view glossary have a default value based on the commands. These are documented in the Commands section for each command.

Let’s try an example!

Suppose you just bought 30 kg worth of potatoes, today is 5th September 2022, and you do not feel the need to record an expiry date Date where an item spoils, expires, or becomes unusable. Expiry date is in the format “day-month-year”, represented in the “dd-mm-yyyy” format.
Click to view glossary , price or remarks for this item.

ITEM_NAME: Potatoes

QUANTITY: 30

UNIT: kg

BOUGHT_DATE: 05-09-2022

The command you would like to enter into the command box would be:

new n/Potatoes qty/30 u/kg bgt/05-09-2022

Alternatively, executing these would do the same thing:

• new qty/30 n/Potatoes bgt/05-09-2022 u/kg

  This is because the order of the flags does not matter.

• new qty/100 n/Carrots qty/30 n/Potatoes bgt/05-09-2022 u/kg

  If two or more values of the same parameter Parameters identify values passed into your Commands. For example, when calling add n/ItemName, the parameter here is n/ItemName.
  Click to view glossary are provided, only the last value for that parameter will be taken. In this case, the name “Carrots” will be overridden by “Potatoes”, and the quantity “100” will be overridden by “30”.

However, note that the following executions are invalid:

• newn/Potatoesqty/30u/kgbgt/05-09-2022

  There must be between the placeholders and flags.

• new qty/-48 n/PÖtátÖes bgt/05/09/22 u/|kg|

  The restrictions of placeholders are not followed.

• new

  There is insufficient information provided; you must minimally provide a name.

Find out more about restrictions in the sections Flags, Placeholders and Commands.

Let’s try out another command – the inc command! inc lets you increment the quantity of an item.

For example, after creating the potatoes item, you decided to buy 40 kg more of potatoes.

Format: inc INDEX [qty/QUANTITY]

Suppose the INDEX for potatoes is 1 in the application, the command you would like to enter into the Command Input Box would be:

inc 1 qty/40

You should now have a better understanding of how commands are formatted and used. All commands are consolidated in the Command Summary.

Here is a checklist you can use before running a command A feature or function that FoodRem can perform.
Click to view glossary :

• I know the restrictions of the command
• I know what parameters Parameters identify values passed into your Commands. For example, when calling add n/ItemName, the parameter here is n/ItemName.
  Click to view glossary are supplied to the command
• I know the flags A marker or delimiter signifying a potentially optional argument to a command. For example on FoodRem, in the syntax n/ITEM_NAME , n/ is the flag.
  Click to view glossary for each parameter to be supplied
• I know the restrictions of each parameter
• I know the effects of not specifying each optional flag.

Commands

This section shares with you on how to use each command A feature or function that FoodRem can perform.
Click to view glossary in detail.

Before continuing, ensure you have read the section on Flags and Placeholders.

What you should expect to find:

• A description of the command
• The format of the command
• The expected behaviour of the command
• A few valid and invalid examples of the command
• Important points to note

Item Commands

Example of an Item:

Create a new item: new

Format: new n/ITEM_NAME [qty/QUANTITY] [u/UNIT] [bgt/BOUGHT_DATE] [exp/EXPIRY_DATE] [p/PRICE] [r/REMARKS]

Creates a new item with the provided information

Example:

new n/Potato qty/70 u/kg bgt/22-02-2022 exp/22-03-2022

Search for an item: find

Format: find KEYWORD [KEYWORDS]...

Finds all items in FoodRem whose names contain substrings A contiguous sequence of characters (letters) that form a part (or a whole) string of text.
Click to view glossary of the KEYWORDS

Example:

find b sug

List all items: list

Format: list

List all items in FoodRem

Example:

list

Sort all items by an attribute: sort

Format: sort [n/] [qty/] [u/] [bgt/] [exp/] [p/] [r/]

Sorts the list of currently displayed items by the provided criteria

Example:

sort n/

View the information of an item: view

Format: view INDEX

Displays the item at the specified index

Example:

view 1

Increment the quantity of an item: inc

Format:: inc INDEX [qty/QUANTITY]

Increments the quantity of the item at the specified index

Example:

inc 1 qty/3

Decrement the quantity of an item: dec

Format:: dec INDEX [qty/QUANTITY]

Decrements the quantity of the item at the specified index

Example:

dec 1 qty/4

Edit the information of an item: edit

Format: edit INDEX [n/ITEM_NAME] [qty/QUANTITY] [u/UNIT] [bgt/BOUGHT_DATE] [exp/EXPIRY_DATE] [p/PRICE] [r/REMARKS]

Updates the details of the item at the specified index

Example:

edit 1 qty/100 n/Spring Onion

Add a remark to an item: rmk

Format: rmk INDEX [r/REMARKS]

Add a remark to the item at the specified index

Example:

rmk 1 r/For party!

Delete an item: del

Format: del INDEX

Deletes the item at the specified index

Example:

del 1

Tag Commands

Example of a Tag:

Create a new tag: newtag

Format: newtag n/TAG_NAME

Creates a new tag with the provided tag name

Example:

newtag n/Vegetables

List all tags: listtag

Format: listtag

List all tags in FoodRem

Example:

listtag

Tag an item: tag

Format: tag INDEX n/TAG_NAME

Tags the item at the specified index

Example:

tag 1 n/Vegetables

Untag an item: untag

Format: untag INDEX n/TAG_NAME

Untags the item at the specified index

Example:

untag 1 n/Vegetables

Rename a tag: renametag

Format: renametag n/TAG_NAME n/TAG_NAME

Renames a tag currently in FoodRem

Example:

renametag n/Vegetables n/Veggies

Filter by a tag: filtertag

Format: filtertag n/TAG_NAME

Filters and shows items that contain a specific tag

Example:

filtertag n/Fruits

Delete a tag: deletetag

Format: deletetag n/TAG_NAME

Deletes a tag that exists in FoodRem

Example:

deletetag n/Veggies

Statistics Command

Display statistics: stats

Format: stats

Displays all statistics collected by FoodRem

Example:

stats

General Commands

Receive help during usage: help

Format: help [COMMAND_WORD]

Displays help for FoodRem

Example:

help

help del

help help

Reset the application: reset

Format: reset

Clears all items and tags in FoodRem

Example:

reset

Exit FoodRem: exit

Format: exit

Exits FoodRem

Example:

exit

Command Summary

Item Commands

Tag Commands

Statistics Command

General Commands

Troubleshooting

Problem:

The JAR file not launching even after double-clicking the file.

Solution:

1. Open your terminal
   • Windows:
     • The default key combination to launch your terminal is Ctrl+Shift+P
   • Mac:
     • Use Cmd+Space to open Spotlight Search
     • Search for “terminal” and click it to launch.
2. Navigate to the location where “foodrem.jar” is stored within your terminal.
3. On your terminal, run java -jar "foodrem.jar"

Problem:

The JAR file not launching in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Solution:

1. Our recommendation is to run FoodRem on Windows and not on WSL.

Problem:

The JAR file not launching in Linux machines running Wayland.

Solution:

1. FoodRem is only supported on machines with the following operating systems: Windows, macOS and Linux11. Please use a computer running on these operating systems.

Problem:

Unable to exit/save FoodRem to data file

Solution:

1. This error is due to foodrem.jar being started in a protected folder. (Examples of write-protected folders include C:\WINDOWS\System32 in windows and the /etc dir in linux)
   Please move the foodrem.jar file into another folder in your computer and start FoodRem from that folder.

FAQ

Q: If I do not have Java 11, how do I install it on my computer?
A: You can navigate to this site here and download Java 11 according to your system’s specifications.

Q: Do I need an internet connection to run FoodRem?
A: No, FoodRem can boot up and run all functionalities without an internet connection.

Q: Can I use FoodRem on my mobile device?
A: Unfortunately, FoodRem is only designed to run on your desktop/laptop such that you can use the command line interface.

Q: How do I transfer my data to another computer?
A: Install FoodRem on the other computer and overwrite the empty data file with the data file created by FoodRem in your current computer.

Acknowledgements

FoodRem is a brownfield software project based off AddressBook Level-3, taken under the CS2103T Software Engineering module held by the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore.

Java dependencies:

• Jackson for JSON-related operations
• JavaFX for GUI
• JUnit5 for testing

Documentation dependencies:

• Jekyll for rendering the website
• PlantUML for creating UML diagrams

Fonts used in FoodRem:

• FoodRem Java App:
  • Epilogue by Tyler Finck
  • JetBrains Mono by Philipp Nurullin and Konstantin Bulenkov
  • Montserrat by Julieta Ulanovsky et al.
• FoodRem Website:
  • Epilogue by Tyler Finck
  • Source Code Pro by Paul D. Hunt

Other acknowledgments:

• Material Design Icons:
  • food-turkey by Colton Wiscombe as FoodRem’s App Icon
• Font Awesome 6 icons:
  • book as the “note” admonition icon
  • circle-info as the “info” admonition icon
  • fire-flame-curved as the “danger” admonition icon
  • lightbulb as the “tip” admonition icon
  • triangle-exclamation as the “warning” admonition icon
• Octicons:
  • git-merge for the PR badge used in the project PPPs
  • issue-closed for the issue badge used in the project PPPs
• Code acknowledgements:
  • Custom link fragment checker adapted from the World Wide Web Consortium
  • Pure CSS auto-incrementing heading counters adapted from @gvgramazio on StackOverflow
  • PDF styling of HTML pages following Michael Perrin’s tutorial
  • Pure liquid admonitions adapted from @kimkyunghwan21 on GitHub
  • Pure liquid HTML table-of-contents from @allejo on GitHub
• Miscellaneous:
  • Docusaurus for admonition colors and styling
  • GitHub for “PR merged” and “issue closed” colors used in PPP badges
  • SchemeColor for admonition colors

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