What Inventory Tracks
Gaia tracks on-hand inventory at the item level for each school. The on-hand amount is updated automatically by orders, production records, and any manual adjustments you make. It feeds forecasting (to know what is already available) and the inventory transaction log (for audit and accountability).
How On-Hand Is Calculated
On-hand is the running total of every inventory transaction for an item at a school. Transactions include:
Received orders: when an order is marked as received, the received amounts are added to on-hand.
Submitted production records: ingredient amounts used in served recipes are subtracted from on-hand.
Manual adjustments: check-in, check-out, true-up, transfers, and damaged or discarded inventory.
How Inventory Value Is Calculated
The School Inventory and Daily Inventory reports price stock at what you actually paid for it, from the delivery it was received on, not your vendor's current catalog price. A vendor price change doesn't change the reported value of stock you already have on hand.
Stock with no known purchase price (a manual count, a transfer, or a manufactured item with no delivery behind it) shows as Unknown rather than being counted as worthless.
The Four Inventory Actions
From the item page, four actions let you adjust on-hand:
Check-In: adds inventory. Use when inventory arrives outside of a Gaia-generated order.
Check-Out: subtracts inventory. Use for damaged, discarded, or otherwise removed inventory not captured by a production record.
True Up: resets inventory to a specific amount. Use this after a physical count to align Gaia with what is on the shelf.
Transfer: moves inventory from your site to another site. The amount is subtracted from the sending site and added to the receiving site in a single linked transaction.
Writing Off Inactive Stock
If an item is deactivated while you still have on-hand stock of it, a central-facility manager or director can write off that stock directly from the item, with a required reason recorded on the resulting transaction. This is separate from the four actions above: it only applies to stock tied to an item that's no longer active.
Where You Can Update Inventory
Item page: full range of actions (Check-In, Check-Out, True Up, Transfer).
On-Hand Panel on the weekly production view: for items shown on the panel, click into the serving count field and type the correct amount to true it up.
Pantry: from a Pantry view that includes inventory, either overwrite the quantity cell directly or open the full update panel for the full set of actions.
Production records: ingredient-level inventory adjustments can be entered directly on a production record at submit time.
Inventory Status on Production Records
Once a forecast is confirmed, Gaia shows a Ready or Insufficient status for each recipe and ingredient on that day's production record. The status reflects the projected on-hand amount at the time of production, accounting for placed orders. See About Forecasting in Gaia for details.
Inventory Transaction Log
Every inventory change is recorded in the transaction log. The log shows what changed, when, who made the change, and which order or production record the change is linked to.
Shelf Life and Expiration
Items can have a shelf life and expiration date tracked on inventory. Gaia uses this to flag expired inventory and to block forecasting recipes on days past the expiration date.