Quick Start Guide

Welcome to CoolerCount

A focused walkthrough of everything you need to do during your first hour with CoolerCount — from activation through your first inventory adjustments. Plan on about 15–20 minutes to read.

9 sections Initial setup focused Print friendly
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Start here

What CoolerCount does for you

CoolerCount™ is a tool restaurants use to manage inventory, food and supplies vendors, restocking orders, menus, recipes, ingredients, and even nutritional data. It is designed to be simple to use, but it is also flexible and capable — so there are a few things worth knowing before you dive in.

Please review this guide and you should be ready to have CoolerCount bring efficiency to some of the most time-consuming tasks every food service operator faces.

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First and most important

Register and activate

After you install CoolerCount and launch the application for the first time, you will see the Activation screen. You have three options — all of them get you into CoolerCount right away.

1
Start Free Trial

Fill in your Restaurant Name, Contact Name, Email, and Phone (optional). No credit card needed.

You’ll receive a confirmation email and your 30-day trial begins immediately. CoolerCount will then walk you through initial setup with a short wizard.

2
Request a License

Fill in the same registration form. Your license request is sent to support@coolercount.com and you’ll receive a confirmation email.

A 30-day trial activates immediately while we process your request — no waiting. Once your license key is ready, you’ll receive it by email.

🔑 Already have a license key? Choose Activate with License Key on the Activation screen, enter your Customer ID and License Key, and you’re in. Once active, you can access this from the Purchase a License button on the Trial banner → Activate with License Key.
📬 Don’t see the email? Check your spam or junk folder. Add support@coolercount.com to your safe-senders list to make sure future communications reach your inbox.
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Your first sign-in

Default credentials & Setup Wizard

After activation, CoolerCount will display your default login credentials. Make a note of them — you’ll use them to sign in for the first time.

🔑
Default admin credentials
Username admin
Password FOOD2026
You will be required to set a new password on first sign-in. Please remember it — but if you forget it, support@coolercount.com can help.

Before you reach the sign-in screen, CoolerCount will automatically launch a short Setup Wizard. The wizard walks you through five quick steps:

  • Welcome — an introduction to CoolerCount and its sample data
  • Backup Setup — choose a folder for automatic backups (a cloud drive like Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive is ideal)
  • Your Restaurant — fill in your restaurant’s name, address, email, phone, and contact details; some fields may be pre-filled from your registration
  • Getting Your Data In — a brief overview of the Excel import feature and the optional Open Orders reminder
  • You’re All Set! — links to this guide and the full How To… library
💡 Revisit the wizard any time. After setup is complete, you can return to wizard steps 3–5 from System Settings → Bkup & Options tab → View Setup Guide (Steps 3–5).
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Configure your operation

System Settings

The Setup Wizard handles the essential first-time configuration — your restaurant details and backup folder are set up there. System Settings is where you return to make changes or explore additional options.

  • On the General tab, review and update your restaurant information at any time. This information is used when placing orders with vendors and on your printed menus.
  • On the Bkup & Options tab, you can change your backup folder, run a manual backup, toggle automatic weekly backups on or off, and enable the optional Open Orders reminder.
  • On the Menu Prefs tab, add a logo that appears on your printed menus and set optional header and footer text.
  • On the Inv Setup tab, find tools to import existing inventory data from a spreadsheet.
💡 Pro tip: Use a cloud-synced folder (Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive) for your backups so they’re protected even if your computer fails. CoolerCount automatically keeps your 8 most recent backups and removes older ones.
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Set up your team

User Management & roles

From the main window, click User Management. You are currently signed in with the admin account, which has Full Access. CoolerCount also includes a default manager user and a view-only user.

We suggest creating at least one additional Full Access user and one additional Manager, so the system isn’t dependent on a single account.

Full Access

Full Access

The most powerful account type, with access to every area of the system.

  • All administration tasks
  • User account management
  • Delete data & restore deleted data
  • All inventory, vendor, order, and menu actions
Manager

Manager

For users who need to make day-to-day updates without full administrative power.

  • Adjust inventory levels
  • Build & place vendor orders
  • Create & update menus and recipes
  • Limited deletion abilities
  • No user-account management
View Only

View Only

Read-only access — useful for staff doing physical counts or looking up storage locations.

  • View inventory, menus, recipes
  • Save orders & menus as PDFs
  • Export inventory to Excel
  • Cannot change any data
  • Cannot place vendor orders
💡 Pro tip: Reserve Full Access for ownership and senior management. Manager works well for kitchen managers and sous chefs. View Only suits floor staff who need to reference stock during counts without the risk of accidental changes.
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Take a look around

Inventory Levels

You’re all set to start using CoolerCount. We’ve included some basic data to help you get started — you can use it as-is, modify it, or delete it now or later.

Open Inventory Levels and you’ll see a sample selection of 40+ inventory items. The most important things to understand here:

  • Item name — the name you use to track this item in your operation
  • On Hand — what you have in stock right now
  • PAR — the level you typically like to keep in stock
  • Status — calculated automatically from On Hand vs. PAR

If your On Hand is less than PAR, the status will show LOW or OUT. If it’s at or above PAR, it will show OK. This is just the start of what Inventory Levels can do.

📥 Already have inventory in a spreadsheet? You can import it directly. Open System Settings → Inv Setup tab → Create Import Template. Cut-and-paste or manually add your data into the template, then choose Import Initial Inventory Items.
⚠️ Format is critical. Your data must be in the template’s exact format — do not rename or reorder columns. Clean data imports cleanly; messy data imports just as faithfully.
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Build your supply network

Vendor & Order Guide Management

Vendor & OG Management is where you add your vendors and their Order Guides — the lists of items each vendor offers along with current pricing.

Order Guides are a critical part of placing new orders and comparing pricing across alternative vendors.

📧 Pro tip for new users: While you’re getting comfortable with vendor orders, consider setting each vendor’s email address to your own email (not the vendor’s actual address). When you build and email purchase orders, they’ll come to you first — you can review each one before forwarding it to the vendor. Once you’re confident, switch the vendor email back to their real address; orders will then go directly to them, with a copy to you for your records.
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Place & track purchase orders

Manage Orders

Manage Orders is where you build vendor purchase orders. Every order moves through one of four status categories:

Open The order is being actively built and has not yet been sent to the vendor. Open orders can stay in the system as long as you need — until you’re ready to send or delete them.
Sent The order is finalized and has been emailed to the vendor for fulfillment. Most vendors receive orders by email, but they can also be saved as PDFs and delivered manually. If you hand-deliver, save proof the order was accepted.
Received When the order is delivered, change the status to Received and adjust quantities to reflect what actually arrived versus what was ordered. This keeps your records accurate.
Cancelled Open orders can be cancelled any time — a Full Access user can later restore them or permanently delete them. Sent orders can also be cancelled, and CoolerCount will ask whether to send a cancellation email to the vendor. Received orders cannot be cancelled, for obvious reasons.

You’re ready to go

That’s enough to get you off to a productive start. When you’re ready to learn more — importing in bulk, configuring units of measure, building order guides at scale, or any of the deeper workflows — the full How To… library walks you through every module in detail.

Continue to How To… → Back to CoolerCount Home