# Handbook: complete public documentation > The Handbook Company is operations software for small businesses: employee training and onboarding, SOPs, checklists, recipes, operating standards, a shared document library, inventory workflows from counting through forecasting and ordering, supplier tracking, and an approval-based AI assistant that proposes changes but never applies them without explicit human approval. --- # Everything your team is supposed to know, in one place they will actually look. > Handbook keeps training, SOPs, checklists, recipes, standards, and inventory in one connected system, so the way your business runs stops living in binders, group chats, and whoever happens to be on shift. ## Three jobs, one system - **Teach it once**: Training steps, courses, and guides new hires can work through on their own, instead of shadowing whoever is free. - **Keep it consistent**: SOPs, recipes, and standards that stay findable during real work, not filed somewhere nobody opens twice. - **Know where you stand**: Checklists that show what actually got done, and inventory that tells you what you are about to run out of. ## Operational drift is a scattering problem Most small businesses do not have a training problem or an inventory problem. They have a scattering problem. The recipe is in a binder, the prep standard is in someone's memory, the closing list is a photo in a group chat, and the count is a spreadsheet one person owns. Every one of those is fine on its own. Together they mean the business only runs correctly when the right people are working, and every new hire relearns it from scratch. ## Layers that reinforce each other Handbook connects the layers instead of adding another tool beside them. A checklist can point at the SOP that explains it. A recipe can pull from the items you actually stock. Training can reference the standard the shift will be measured against. Teams usually start with training and standards, then add checklists, then inventory once the first two are carrying weight. - Training, courses, guides, and a shared document library. - SOPs, recipes, and operating standards that stay current. - Checklist workflows for opening, closing, prep, and recurring work. - Inventory checks, forecasting, shopping lists, transfers, and sources. - An approval-based AI assistant that proposes changes and never applies them on its own. ## Pricing $30 per month per handbook, plus $5 per accepted user. Every new handbook starts with a 15-day free trial. Full pricing: https://handbook.company/pricing Source: https://handbook.company/index.md --- # Everything in Handbook > Five layers, built to be used together. You do not have to adopt all of them at once, and most teams do not. ## New hires who can find the answer themselves _Training and onboarding_ Training steps, courses, and guides give a new hire a path to work through instead of a shift spent shadowing whoever happens to be free that day. Because the training sits beside the SOPs and checklists it describes, what someone learns in week one is the same material they will reference in month six. - Structured training steps and courses for ramp-up. - Guides and reference material for day-to-day questions. - Role-based expectations, so people see what applies to them. Section anchor: https://handbook.company/features#training ## One current version, not four half-current ones _SOPs, recipes, and standards_ Policies, SOPs, recipes, prep standards, and reference documents live in a shared library rather than across a binder, a shared drive, and three pinned messages. When a standard changes, it changes in one place, and the checklist that references it is already pointing at the new version. - A shared document library for policies and references. - Recipes and prep standards with the detail the line actually needs. - Shift guides for the questions that come up mid-service. Section anchor: https://handbook.company/features#standards ## Recurring work you can actually verify _Checklists_ Opening, closing, cleaning, prep, and weekly maintenance run as real checklists with a record of who completed what and when. Managers stop reconstructing the shift from memory, and the list itself carries the standard rather than assuming everyone remembers it. - Recurring and one-off checklist workflows. - Completion history, so follow-through is reviewable. - Items that link straight to the SOP explaining them. Section anchor: https://handbook.company/features#checklists ## From counting to ordering, without the spreadsheet _Inventory_ Inventory checks, forecasting, shopping lists, transfers, locations, items, and source tracking are one connected workflow instead of a spreadsheet only one person understands. Counts feed the forecast, the forecast builds the shopping list, and the list knows which supplier each item comes from. - Guided inventory checks tied to your own item list. - Forecast Center and economics views for purchasing decisions. - Shopping lists, transfers, multi-location setup, and bulk editing. - Source and supplier tracking, connected to the local marketplace. Section anchor: https://handbook.company/features#inventory ## It proposes. You approve. _Handbook Assistant AI_ The assistant can answer questions about your handbook and draft structured changes to it: adding items, drafting a checklist, cleaning up a list after a CSV import. Every write waits for explicit human approval. The assistant never applies a change on its own, which is the whole reason it is safe to point at your operating data. - Answers grounded in your handbook, not the open internet. - Proposed changes shown in full before anything is applied. - Approve, edit, or reject each proposal individually. Section anchor: https://handbook.company/features#assistant ## Common questions **Can The Handbook Company be used for employee training?** Yes. The Handbook Company supports employee training with training steps, courses, guides, documents, and role-based expectations that teams can use during onboarding and day-to-day work. **What inventory tools does The Handbook Company include?** The Handbook Company includes inventory checks, forecast center workflows, economics visibility, shopping lists, transfers, location and item management, source tracking, and setup support. **What is the Handbook Assistant AI?** The Handbook Assistant AI is an approval-based assistant on supported handbook pages that can answer questions and propose structured changes while keeping people in control. Source: https://handbook.company/features.md --- # Pricing > One price per handbook, plus a small amount per person who actually uses it. No tiers to decode and no feature held back to sell you an upgrade. ## The price - **$30 per month**, per handbook - **plus $5 per month**, per accepted user ### Example monthly totals | Team | Users | Per month | | --- | --- | --- | | A small team | 3 | $45 | | A single busy location | 10 | $80 | | A larger crew | 25 | $155 | A handbook is one business, or one location. Each handbook is its own subscription, so if you run two locations you pay for two, and each one keeps its own team, standards, and inventory. ## What every handbook includes - Employee training, onboarding, courses, and guides. - SOPs, recipes, standards, and a shared document library. - Checklist workflows for recurring and shift work. - Inventory checks, forecasting, shopping lists, transfers, and source tracking. - Approval-based Handbook Assistant AI on supported pages. - Local marketplace listing and supplier discovery. ## The trial Every new handbook starts with a 15-day free trial. No payment method is required to start, but you will need to add one before the trial ends to keep access. ## Questions **How does pricing work?** Each handbook is its own subscription at $30 per month plus $5 per accepted user. Pricing applies per handbook even if you own more than one. **Is there a free trial?** Yes. Every new handbook starts with a 15-day free trial. No payment method is required to start, but you will need to add one before the trial ends to keep access. **Can we explore the product before signing up?** Yes. You can review the public product pages, browse the local marketplace, and book a live demo before starting a trial. Source: https://handbook.company/pricing.md --- # Restaurant Operations Software > Training, prep standards, service checklists, recipes, and inventory in one system. Here is what that looks like across a single day of service. Restaurants rarely fail on the big things. They drift on the small ones: a prep step skipped because the person who knew it is off, a recipe that changed in the kitchen but not in the binder, a walk-in count nobody did until Friday. Handbook is built for the drift. ## A day of service ### 6:00 AM, opening: The opening list runs itself Whoever opens works a real checklist rather than a remembered one. Equipment on, temps logged, prep pulled, and the list records who did it and when. If a step needs explaining, the item links to the SOP that explains it, so a new opener does not need someone else on the phone. - Opening, closing, and cleaning lists with completion history. - Items that link to the procedure behind them. - Manager sign-off when a shift needs one. ### 10:00 AM, prep: One current recipe, not three Recipes, prep standards, and portioning live in the shared library, so the version on the line is the version the chef last changed. Update a spec once and every station is working from it on the next shift, without reprinting anything or hoping the change was mentioned. - Recipes with prep steps, yields, and portioning. - Service and plating standards beside the recipe. - Changes land in one place and apply everywhere. ### 3:00 PM, between services: Counting that turns into ordering An inventory check walks the person through your item list in the order they actually walk the walk-in, and what they enter feeds the forecast. The shopping list builds itself from the count and knows which supplier each item comes from, so ordering stops being a memory exercise. - Guided counts against your own items and units. - Forecasting and shopping lists built from real counts. - Source tracking, transfers between locations, and par levels. ### Next week, a new hire: Ramp-up that does not cost a shift A new server or line cook gets training steps and guides they can work through directly, built from the same SOPs and recipes the shift already runs on. That means the material is current by construction, and training does not pull your best person off the floor for three days. - Structured onboarding for front and back of house. - Courses and guides drawn from the standards in use. - Role-based expectations, so people see what applies to them. ## Restaurant questions **Is The Handbook Company useful for restaurants?** Yes. The Handbook Company can help restaurants centralize SOPs, onboarding, checklists, recipes, operational standards, and inventory-related work across the team. **Can The Handbook Company centralize recipes and standards?** Yes. The Handbook Company can centralize recipes, prep standards, service expectations, SOPs, and reference documents so teams stop searching across chats, binders, and memory. **Does The Handbook Company support inventory workflows?** Yes. The Handbook Company includes optional inventory workflows for checks, forecasting, shopping lists, transfers, source tracking, and setup. **Is The Handbook Company useful for coffee shops?** Yes. The Handbook Company is a strong fit for coffee shops that need employee training, recipes, standards, checklists, onboarding, and inventory workflows in the same operating system. Source: https://handbook.company/restaurant-operations-software.md --- # Frequently asked questions > Direct answers about what Handbook does, who it is for, and what it costs. If something here is not clear enough, that is worth telling us about. ## The basics **What is The Handbook Company?** The Handbook Company is software for small businesses to manage employee training, onboarding, SOPs, checklists, recipes, operational standards, inventory workflows, and day-to-day execution. **Who is The Handbook Company for?** The Handbook Company is built for small business owners, operators, and managers who need a clearer system for team training, standards, recurring work, and operational follow-through. **Can we explore the product before signing up?** Yes. You can review the public product pages, browse the local marketplace, and book a live demo before starting a trial. ## Training and onboarding **Can The Handbook Company be used for employee training?** Yes. The Handbook Company supports employee training with training steps, courses, guides, documents, and role-based expectations that teams can use during onboarding and day-to-day work. **Can The Handbook Company help with onboarding?** Yes. The Handbook Company helps with onboarding by giving new hires one place for training steps, courses, documents, standards, and recurring expectations. **Does The Handbook Company include courses?** Yes. The Handbook Company includes structured courses alongside training steps, guides, documents, and standards so teams can support onboarding and ongoing learning in one system. ## Standards, SOPs, and documents **Can The Handbook Company manage SOPs?** Yes. The Handbook Company helps teams manage SOPs, policies, guides, recipes, and other operating standards in one place so expectations are easier to find and follow. **Can The Handbook Company manage checklists?** Yes. The Handbook Company includes checklist workflows for recurring work, shift execution, and follow-through so managers do not have to rely on memory or scattered reminders. **Can The Handbook Company centralize recipes and standards?** Yes. The Handbook Company can centralize recipes, prep standards, service expectations, SOPs, and reference documents so teams stop searching across chats, binders, and memory. **Can The Handbook Company centralize a document library?** Yes. The Handbook Company can centralize policies, SOPs, guides, standards, and other reference documents in the same system as training, checklists, and daily operations. **Does The Handbook Company support shift guides and reference material?** Yes. The Handbook Company includes guides and operational reference material so teams can find day-to-day instructions, standards, and supporting context inside the same system. ## Inventory and suppliers **Does The Handbook Company support inventory workflows?** Yes. The Handbook Company includes optional inventory workflows for checks, forecasting, shopping lists, transfers, source tracking, and setup. **What inventory tools does The Handbook Company include?** The Handbook Company includes inventory checks, forecast center workflows, economics visibility, shopping lists, transfers, location and item management, source tracking, and setup support. **Can The Handbook Company manage supplier and source information?** Yes. The Handbook Company supports source tracking inside the inventory system and connects that inventory context to the public local marketplace for supplier discovery. ## The Handbook Assistant AI **What is the Handbook Assistant AI?** The Handbook Assistant AI is an approval-based assistant on supported handbook pages that can answer questions and propose structured changes while keeping people in control. **Can the Handbook Assistant AI change data automatically?** No. The assistant can propose actions, but every write still requires explicit human approval before anything is applied. ## Fit for your business **Is The Handbook Company useful for coffee shops?** Yes. The Handbook Company is a strong fit for coffee shops that need employee training, recipes, standards, checklists, onboarding, and inventory workflows in the same operating system. **Is The Handbook Company useful for restaurants?** Yes. The Handbook Company can help restaurants centralize SOPs, onboarding, checklists, recipes, operational standards, and inventory-related work across the team. ## Pricing and trials **How does pricing work?** Each handbook is its own subscription at $30 per month plus $5 per accepted user. Pricing applies per handbook even if you own more than one. **Is there a free trial?** Yes. Every new handbook starts with a 15-day free trial. No payment method is required to start, but you will need to add one before the trial ends to keep access. Source: https://handbook.company/faq.md --- # About The Handbook Company > Handbook is built by people who run the kind of business it is built for, which is most of the explanation for why it works the way it does. ## Why it exists Small businesses do not usually lose to competitors. They lose to drift: the standard that slipped, the training that never quite happened, the count nobody did. None of it is dramatic, and all of it compounds. The tools that promise to fix this tend to solve one slice and add another login. So the recipe lives in one place, the checklist in another, and the inventory in a spreadsheet, and none of them know about each other. Handbook exists because the connections between those things are where the value actually is. ## Who builds it The Handbook Company is owned and developed by Beanchain Coffee LLC, in Arizona. We run a coffee business. Handbook started as the system we needed for our own team, which is why it is opinionated about things like counting inventory in the order you walk the shelf, and why the AI assistant will not write to your data without asking. ## How we decide what to build The product direction is practical rather than visionary. If a feature does not make an expectation easier to find, easier to teach, or easier to keep current, it tends not to get built. That is also why the public pages here use plain language about training, SOPs, checklists, recipes, inventory, and suppliers, instead of describing a category. It is easier to tell whether the product fits when the description is literal. ## Getting in touch Email contact@handbook.company and a person will read it. Feature requests, bug reports, and questions about whether it fits your operation are all welcome. Source: https://handbook.company/about.md --- # Updates > Everything we have shipped, what we are building, and what people have asked us for. Updated as we work rather than on a schedule. ## Shipped - **Bring your whole stock list over at once** (September 20, 2026, 1.25.1, Inventory, Suppliers and invoices): Upload the export from whatever you use now and get your items, units, suppliers and prices, however long the file is. https://handbook.company/updates/stock-list-import - **Suppliers, and ten screenshots per report** (September 20, 2026, 1.23.0, Suppliers and invoices, Platform): Inventory calls them suppliers now, everywhere you read it, and a feedback report takes ten screenshots instead of three. https://handbook.company/updates/suppliers-not-sources - **Answering the people who report things** (September 20, 2026, 1.24.0, Platform): The feedback form always promised a follow-up. Nothing in the product could keep that promise. Now it can. https://handbook.company/updates/answering-reports - **Invite your team from the page you are on** (September 19, 2026, 1.21.2, Team and access): Inviting people worked. Finding the invite did not. It now sits on the Team page, and takes several addresses at once. https://handbook.company/updates/invite-your-team - **Checklist reminders, and alerts when a reading is off** (September 11, 2026, 1.12.0, Checklists): A checklist can remind the people who run it, and tell an owner when a temperature or a reading comes back outside the range you set. https://handbook.company/updates/checklist-reminders-and-limits - **The shopping list fits a phone** (September 10, 2026, Inventory): The list you actually carry round a supplier now fits the screen you carry it on, and a row is marked bought by holding it. https://handbook.company/updates/shopping-list-on-a-phone - **Photograph an invoice and the prices land** (September 8, 2026, 1.15.0, Suppliers and invoices, Inventory): Take a picture of a supplier invoice or forward it by email, check the lines it read, and the prices go onto your items. https://handbook.company/updates/invoice-capture - **A real page for every supplier** (September 7, 2026, 1.18.0, Suppliers and invoices): Suppliers get a page each with their items, prices and how to order, and two duplicates of the same supplier can be merged back together. https://handbook.company/updates/supplier-directory - **Checklists that ask for a number, a note or a photo** (September 5, 2026, 1.13.0, Checklists): A checklist item can require a temperature, a short note or a photo, and the box will not tick until it has one. https://handbook.company/updates/checklists-that-ask-for-more - **Economics answers what your inventory costs** (September 4, 2026, 1.8.0, Inventory): One page about money: what stock cost you week by week, what it will cost at the current pace, and which items are worth a look. https://handbook.company/updates/what-inventory-costs - **The Forecast Center, and when things run out** (September 4, 2026, 1.9.0, Inventory): One place for what you are using, what runs out next and when to order it, with the item you are reading about open beside the table. https://handbook.company/updates/forecast-center - **Every item on one page, edited a card at a time** (September 3, 2026, 1.6.0, Inventory): The Items page is a list on the left and one item on the right, with five cards you edit separately instead of one long form in a dialog. https://handbook.company/updates/items-page-rebuilt - **A new handbook walks you through setting up** (August 28, 2026, Platform, Training and courses): Creating a handbook lands in a guided wizard rather than an empty dashboard, and it can draft starter content from documents you already have. https://handbook.company/updates/guided-setup - **Ask for a course and get the whole course** (August 22, 2026, Assistant, Training and courses): The assistant writes a full course section by section rather than sketching an outline and stopping, and it keeps its place across replies. https://handbook.company/updates/assistant-writes-a-course - **A waste log built for the person at the bin** (August 19, 2026, Sustainability): Record what actually gets thrown away, in weight, volume or count, with tare containers and conversions that only run when they are honest. https://handbook.company/updates/waste-log - **Where waste goes, and what to use up first** (August 19, 2026, Sustainability, Inventory): Record who hauls each stream away and on what terms, and get suggestions for using up stock before it becomes waste. https://handbook.company/updates/collectors-and-use-it-up - **The assistant stopped dying on long jobs** (August 18, 2026, Assistant): Long pieces of work pause and carry on by themselves instead of being cut off mid-sentence with a connection error. https://handbook.company/updates/assistant-survives-long-jobs - **A new look, and a public site that loads fast** (August 3, 2026, Platform): One set of brand colours and type across the app, and public pages rebuilt as static files with no framework to download. https://handbook.company/updates/design-refresh ## Building - **A searchable page for everything we ship** (September 21, 2026, Platform): A searchable record of what we shipped, what we are building and what people asked for, instead of feedback vanishing into a form that never replies. https://handbook.company/updates/this-page ## Asked for - **Recipes that know what is on your shelf** (September 21, 2026, Standards and recipes, Inventory): Tie the ingredients in a recipe to real inventory items, then make a batch from the recipe and have the stock move on its own. https://handbook.company/updates/recipes-that-know-your-stock Source: https://handbook.company/updates.md --- # Bring your whole stock list over at once Shipped · September 20, 2026 · 1.25.1 · Inventory, Suppliers and invoices Upload the export from whatever you use now and get your items, units, suppliers and prices, however long the file is. ## Adding items one at a time Setting up inventory meant adding items one card at a time. A cafe with two hundred things on the shelf was looking at an afternoon of typing, and the people who told us about it had already stopped partway through. One of them had been running a handbook for two weeks with nothing in it. There was an importer, but it only existed inside the setup wizard, and skipping that step once meant never finding it again. The Items page never mentioned it. ## How bulk add works Bulk add sits next to New item. Drop in a spreadsheet, a text file, or a list you typed yourself, say anything it should know, and it proposes the items for you to approve. - The assistant reads your column headers and about fifteen rows, tells you what it thinks each column means, and asks about anything genuinely unclear. - Handbook then reads every row itself. A 500-row export takes the same single reply as a 100-row one. - Pack sizes are worked out and checked against the file's own per-unit price, so a column reading "2 x bag" becomes one case holding two bags. - Everything arrives as one approval, and everything is undoable. ## The first version lost rows The first version worked and we shipped it. Then we measured it on a 300-row file and found it was retyping your rows rather than transforming them: 48 round trips, about twenty-five minutes, and by the second half it had begun repeating item names it had already written. Because items match by name, each repeat quietly overwrote an earlier one. Three hundred rows arrived as 166 items and nothing said so. We rebuilt it four days later. The same file now arrives as 300 items in about ten seconds. We would rather tell you that than let you find it. ## What people asked for - Bring an existing inventory list over in one go instead of adding items one at a time. - A clear way to import data, from the Items page rather than buried in setup. Asked for by Cafetal Coffee. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/stock-list-import.md --- # Suppliers, and ten screenshots per report Shipped · September 20, 2026 · 1.23.0 · Suppliers and invoices, Platform Inventory calls them suppliers now, everywhere you read it, and a feedback report takes ten screenshots instead of three. ## Sources are now suppliers Inventory called them sources. Everyone buying from them called them suppliers, including our own help text, which described the Sources page as "a directory of the suppliers you buy from" while the page above it said something else. Every place you read the word has changed: the navigation, page titles, filters, column headers, buttons, the shopping list, the forecast and economics summaries, the bulk editor, the assistant's proposal cards, and the help. Web addresses keep their old spelling, so existing links and bookmarks still work. ## Three labels showed raw database values A supplier's kind appeared as "custom handbook source" and "handbook backed provider", which is a column value with the underscores taken out. They now say Typed in, Marketplace seller and Connected provider. The same three labels were being built in three separate places and had already drifted apart; there is one copy now. ## Ten screenshots per report, up from three A feedback report takes ten images, up from three, and the form says so. The old limit lived inside the page with nothing on screen mentioning it, so a fourth file vanished with a toast that did not explain itself. The person who told us about it emailed us the rest. While fixing the count we found the size and file-type limits were only ever suggestions, checked in the browser on the way past. They are enforced by the server and by storage now, from one shared definition. ## What people asked for - Call sources suppliers, because that is what they are. - Attach more than three screenshots to a report. Asked for by Cafetal Coffee. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/suppliers-not-sources.md --- # Answering the people who report things Shipped · September 20, 2026 · 1.24.0 · Platform The feedback form always promised a follow-up. Nothing in the product could keep that promise. Now it can. ## We found this ourselves Working through a round of feedback, we noticed that three of its four reports were questions, and the fourth was the same question asked again eight days later, because nothing had answered the first one. The form has always had "You can follow up with me about this report" ticked by default. There was no way to keep that promise. People who report things cannot read their own report back, no status change tells them anything, and there was nowhere to write an answer. A question got answered only if somebody noticed it and wrote an email by hand. ## What changed - We can reply from the report itself, and the reply comes from a person rather than a no-reply address, so answering back works. - Past replies sit under the box, so a report that was answered can be told apart from one that was ignored. - "Ask a question" is now its own report type. It used to become a bug report, which made our bug queue look worse than it was and buried the questions inside it. ## If you declined follow-up Then we will not email you, and the report says so rather than failing when somebody presses send. Reports filed before the form offered that choice are treated as answerable, because reading a missing answer as a no would make every older report unanswerable. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/answering-reports.md --- # Invite your team from the page you are on Shipped · September 19, 2026 · 1.21.2 · Team and access Inviting people worked. Finding the invite did not. It now sits on the Team page, and takes several addresses at once. ## Invites worked, but nobody could find them Someone asked us how to add their team. Invites worked perfectly well, and had done for months. The only way to reach them was an admin page most people never open, and then a round button whose only label was a tooltip, which a touch screen never shows. The Team page, where the question came from, said nothing about people at all. The owner who asked had been running her handbook for seventeen days and had not sent a single invite. ## What changed - Owners and administrators can invite from the Team page. While you are the only member it says "Just you so far" and puts the invite right there. - One invite takes several addresses. Paste a list separated by commas, spaces or new lines and pick one role for all of them. If some fail, it keeps those and only those, so a second try does not invite everyone twice. - The dialog says what happens next: an email, accepted by signing in with that same address, and a link that lasts seven days. - Someone opening an invite without an account is offered "Create an account" first, and the sign-up confirmation brings them back to the invite instead of dropping them on the home page. One real invitee had stopped at exactly that point. ## What people asked for - A way to add team members and invite them to the handbook. Asked for by Cafetal Coffee. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/invite-your-team.md --- # A searchable page for everything we ship Building · September 21, 2026 · Platform A searchable record of what we shipped, what we are building and what people asked for, instead of feedback vanishing into a form that never replies. ## Why it exists Until now, the answer to a round of feedback was a document sent to whoever had reported something. It was written once, read once, and then there was nowhere to find it again. Anybody deciding whether to trust a small product with their operation had no way to see whether we actually fix things. This page is that record, kept in the open. It is updated as we work through feedback, not on a schedule, so a gap here means a quiet month rather than a broken promise. ## Why this is a list, not a blog A blog needs somebody to write it every week, and a blog whose last post was in March says something worse about a company than having no blog. This is a list. It grows as a side effect of doing the work, because an entry is written in the same change that ships the thing, and a change a customer would notice is not finished until it has one. Every entry has its own page and its own address, so we can send somebody a link straight to the thing they asked about. The list searches and filters by what part of the product a change touched, and by whether it has shipped, is being built, or is only asked for so far. With JavaScript switched off every entry is still on the page: filtering hides things, so it only ever runs when you ask it to. ## What works now, and what is left Reporting something now gets you an email saying it arrived, and another when the thing you asked about goes live. A business that wants the credit can turn that on in its own settings, and we name nobody who has not. - Still to come: the older work backfilled, so this covers the whole history rather than the last few weeks of it. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/this-page.md --- # Recipes that know what is on your shelf Asked for · September 21, 2026 · Standards and recipes, Inventory Tie the ingredients in a recipe to real inventory items, then make a batch from the recipe and have the stock move on its own. ## What was asked for Link every ingredient to the item it actually is, so "White Chocolate" on a recipe and "White Chocolate Sauce" on the shelf stop being two unrelated pieces of text. Then give the Inventory page a way to make something from a recipe: it takes the inputs out of stock and puts the finished thing in, in one action, instead of you adjusting each line by hand and hoping the arithmetic held. Costing falls out of the first half rather than being the goal. Once an ingredient is a real item with a real last-paid price, a drink can tell you what it costs and what happens when a supplier raises a price. ## Why it is not built yet A recipe today is one row with its ingredients stored as free text. The amount is a string, so nothing stops it being "a splash". The unit is free text too, and the seed data measures espresso in shots, syrup in pumps and one purée in vibes. None of that connects to anything countable. The bridge already exists, which is the encouraging part: inventory can already express "one pump is 0.015 of a bottle", and it knows how ounces relate to pounds without anyone typing a conversion. What is missing is a link from a recipe line to an item, and a way to record making something, since stock movements today can only be counted, moved, adjusted or restocked. Producing has no place to go. This is researched rather than scheduled, and it is the oldest thing still open on our list. Invoice capture shipped first, on purpose, because costing is only as honest as the prices behind it. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/recipes-that-know-your-stock.md --- # Checklist reminders, and alerts when a reading is off Shipped · September 11, 2026 · 1.12.0 · Checklists A checklist can remind the people who run it, and tell an owner when a temperature or a reading comes back outside the range you set. ## Reminders A recurring checklist can now remind the people responsible for it, by push or by email, on the days it is due. Before this, a checklist existed and was remembered or it was not, and the ones that quietly stopped being done looked identical to the ones nobody had needed that week. ## Alerts on a reading An item that asks for a number can carry a range. Record a walk-in at 45 degrees when the range says 35 to 40 and the owners and administrators hear about it, with the checklist, the item and the number in the message, rather than finding it in a report on Monday. The range is optional and set per item in the editor, so a checklist that wants a reading without an opinion about it still works the way it did. ## Email is weekly only, on purpose Reminders go out by push whenever they are due, but the email version is only sent for a checklist that runs once a week. A daily reminder email is spam, and spam costs us the ability to deliver the emails that matter. ## What people asked for - Remind the team when a recurring checklist is due. - Tell somebody when a recorded temperature is outside the safe range. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/checklist-reminders-and-limits.md --- # Checklists that ask for a number, a note or a photo Shipped · September 5, 2026 · 1.13.0 · Checklists A checklist item can require a temperature, a short note or a photo, and the box will not tick until it has one. ## A tick is not always enough A checkbox records that somebody said a thing was done. For most work that is the right amount of ceremony. For a fridge temperature, a cleaning photo or a reading somebody will want to look back at, it is not, and teams were writing those into a notes field or keeping them on paper beside the tablet. ## What an item can ask for Each item in the editor gets an "Asks for" control: a number with a unit you type yourself, a short text, and a photo that can be off, optional or required. An item can ask for any combination alongside its checkbox. - An item that asks for a number or a text cannot be ticked until it has one, so a run cannot be completed by tapping through it. - Photos are attached to the item rather than the whole checklist, so a month later it is clear which one the photo was of. - Everything recorded this way shows up in the checklist reports, where it can be read back over time. ## What people asked for - Record a temperature against a checklist item, not just tick it. - Attach a photo as proof that something was done. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/checklists-that-ask-for-more.md --- # Every item on one page, edited a card at a time Shipped · September 3, 2026 · 1.6.0 · Inventory The Items page is a list on the left and one item on the right, with five cards you edit separately instead of one long form in a dialog. ## One long form for everything Changing a price meant finding an Edit control in a card menu, opening a dialog that held every field an item has, and scrolling it. On a phone that is most of the work of keeping inventory current, and it is why prices went stale. ## Five cards, one sheet each An item is now At a glance, Where it is kept, Suppliers and prices, Units, and Checks. Each card has its own Edit and its own short sheet: full screen on a phone, a centred dialog on a desktop, Save disabled until something actually changes, and a prompt if you close with unsaved work. - The list says what is wrong with each row rather than making you open it. Units need review, no supplier, no price, price 30 days old, not kept anywhere. - Filter to Needs attention and work down the list. - Prices are compared in the unit you count in, so $78.00 per bag reads $6.50 per pound underneath as you type, and the card says when your primary supplier is not the cheapest. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/items-page-rebuilt.md --- # Economics answers what your inventory costs Shipped · September 4, 2026 · 1.8.0 · Inventory One page about money: what stock cost you week by week, what it will cost at the current pace, and which items are worth a look. ## Two numbers that disagreed The old page had two tabs, three tiles, five cards and a table, and its two headline figures were computed from different data over different periods. They disagreed with each other, which is worse than having one of them, because you cannot tell which to believe. ## One page, one pace Spend, then what drives it, then what is worth a look, then a line saying how much check history the numbers rest on. Everything that was not about money moved to the Forecast Center, which already owned it. - Windows are weeks now, not days: 4, 13, 26 or 52. - Each week's spend is priced at the price that was in force that week, so raising a supplier's price changes what you will spend and leaves what you already spent alone. - The forecast uses the same usage pace as the Forecast Center and the shopping list, so three pages stop giving three answers. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/what-inventory-costs.md --- # Photograph an invoice and the prices land Shipped · September 8, 2026 · 1.15.0 · Suppliers and invoices, Inventory Take a picture of a supplier invoice or forward it by email, check the lines it read, and the prices go onto your items. ## Prices were typed in by hand, so they aged Every price in inventory had to be entered by somebody, which meant they were right on the day they were entered and drifted from there. A costing built on six-month-old prices is a guess with a decimal point. ## Capture, review, confirm Photograph a receipt or upload a PDF and the lines come back matched against your items. Review each one and confirm. Confirming records the price, links the item to that supplier, and remembers the supplier's own item number so the next invoice matches by itself. - You can email an invoice in instead of uploading it, to an address belonging to your handbook. - Every capture is checked against the invoice total, and anything the reader could not make out is flagged rather than guessed. - Pack sizes like "2 x bag" are converted and checked against the per-unit price on the same line. - A receipt can be attached to a shopping trip, so what you planned to buy and what you actually paid end up in the same place. ## Off until you turn it on Invoice capture is a feature setting, off by default. So is catalog sharing, which is separate: it lets confirmed lines help build the shared supplier catalogue, and it never includes anything identifying your business or how much you bought. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/invoice-capture.md --- # A waste log built for the person at the bin Shipped · August 19, 2026 · Sustainability Record what actually gets thrown away, in weight, volume or count, with tare containers and conversions that only run when they are honest. ## Projected waste is not measured waste Sustainability could estimate waste from what you bought. Nothing recorded what was actually thrown out, which is the number a waste programme, a cost figure or a city report needs. The standard answer to this is a printed logbook and a spreadsheet. ## Three buttons at the bin Food, packaging, plate waste. Pick what it was and why, where it went, and how much, as a weight, a volume or a count. Anyone on the team can log one. Your own entry stays editable for a day, and admins can fix anything. - Weigh in a saved container and its tare weight comes off automatically. - Pounds and kilograms always total. Volumes and counts convert only when the entry is linked to an item whose units are set up, and anything that cannot be converted honestly is counted separately rather than guessed into the total. - Collectors record who hauls what away, so the log reconciles against what actually left the building. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/waste-log.md --- # The assistant stopped dying on long jobs Shipped · August 18, 2026 · Assistant Long pieces of work pause and carry on by themselves instead of being cut off mid-sentence with a connection error. ## It stopped mid-sentence Ask the assistant for anything large and it could stop halfway through, leave a cut-off reply on screen, and show a connection error. The only way forward was to ask again and hope. Worse, you could not tell what it had already done, so asking again risked doing half of it twice. ## What changed - It estimates what the next piece of work will cost before starting it, using how long this turn's earlier pieces took, and stops cleanly rather than starting something that will not fit. A stop is a pause the panel continues from on its own. - Every model call carries its own deadline, so a stalled call is ended by us rather than by the host cutting the connection. - It says what it actually did, rather than what it intended to do. - A bulk change that fails partway is rolled back as a unit, so you are never left with half of it applied. - It remembers what it has already read, so a long conversation stops re-reading the same things and running out of room. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/assistant-survives-long-jobs.md --- # Ask for a course and get the whole course Shipped · August 22, 2026 · Assistant, Training and courses The assistant writes a full course section by section rather than sketching an outline and stopping, and it keeps its place across replies. ## An outline is not a course Asking for training used to get you a structure and a promise. Somebody still had to write every section, which is the part that does not happen, so the course sat as a skeleton nobody could assign. ## Written in full, then shown once It lays out the structure first, writes each stage in full, and shows you the finished course as a single proposal to approve. A long one takes several replies and it picks up exactly where it stopped, including when you come back later and say keep going. The panel shows how far it has got while it works, so a long run is something you can watch rather than a row of chips scrolling past. Nothing is written into your handbook until you approve it, and a change to a published course keeps learner progress and can be undone. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/assistant-writes-a-course.md --- # A new handbook walks you through setting up Shipped · August 28, 2026 · Platform, Training and courses Creating a handbook lands in a guided wizard rather than an empty dashboard, and it can draft starter content from documents you already have. ## An empty dashboard is a hard place to start A new handbook used to open on nothing, with a navigation menu full of features and no indication which one mattered first. The people who got past that had usually been shown it by somebody. ## One step per thing you turned on The wizard walks a step per enabled feature, offers to draft starter content where that makes sense, and says plainly when it cannot. Upload the documents you already run on and it reads them rather than inventing something generic. It is resumable. Leave partway and the dashboard keeps a card with your progress; picking it up opens where you stopped, rather than starting the interview again. Every drafted step, checklist, recipe, guide or course stays a proposal until you approve it. Nothing lands unreviewed, and a step you would rather do yourself can be skipped without blocking the ones after it. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/guided-setup.md --- # The shopping list fits a phone Shipped · September 10, 2026 · Inventory The list you actually carry round a supplier now fits the screen you carry it on, and a row is marked bought by holding it. ## It was built for a desk The shopping list is used standing in an aisle holding a phone, and it was laid out like a table on a monitor. Names were squeezed to a few characters, the price and the quantity competed for the same space, and marking something bought meant hitting a small control next to a smaller one. ## What changed - Rows are readable at phone width, with the item name given the room and the numbers underneath rather than beside. - Hold a row to mark it bought, which is hard to do by accident and easy to do with one hand. - The price shown is per the unit you buy in, not the unit you count in, because that is the number on the shelf edge. - Something you have already checked in is not also still due. ## What people asked for - Make the shopping list usable on a phone in a shop. - Stop the item name being squeezed out by the price. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/shopping-list-on-a-phone.md --- # A real page for every supplier Shipped · September 7, 2026 · 1.18.0 · Suppliers and invoices Suppliers get a page each with their items, prices and how to order, and two duplicates of the same supplier can be merged back together. ## A list of names Suppliers existed mostly as a label on an item. There was nowhere to see everything you buy from one of them, what you last paid, or how you are supposed to place an order, so that last part lived in somebody's head. ## What a supplier page holds - Everything you buy from them, with the price you last paid and when. - How to order: the free text that was previously passed on verbally. - Their own item numbers, learned from invoices, so future captures match by themselves. ## Merging duplicates Any two suppliers can now be merged, not just ones the system had already guessed were the same. That guess was the old requirement, and it meant WinCo and WinCo Foods sat side by side with a working merge behind a button nobody could reach. Merging keeps both suppliers' price history rather than discarding the one being absorbed. ## What people asked for - Let me merge two suppliers that are obviously the same company. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/supplier-directory.md --- # The Forecast Center, and when things run out Shipped · September 4, 2026 · 1.9.0 · Inventory One place for what you are using, what runs out next and when to order it, with the item you are reading about open beside the table. ## Guessing from the last count Knowing what to order meant looking at the current count and remembering roughly how fast it goes. That works for the six things you think about and not for the other hundred, which is how a kitchen runs out of one ingredient on a Friday. ## A pace per item, from your own counts The estimate engine works out a usage rate per item from the checks you have already done, and everything else reads from it: what runs out first, what to put on the shopping list, and what Economics thinks you will spend. Opening an item shows its history beside the table rather than replacing it, so you keep your place in the list you were working down. The page says how much history each estimate rests on, because a pace from two counts is a different thing from a pace from twenty. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/forecast-center.md --- # A new look, and a public site that loads fast Shipped · August 3, 2026 · Platform One set of brand colours and type across the app, and public pages rebuilt as static files with no framework to download. ## Two products wearing different clothes The app and the public site had drifted apart: close enough to look like a rendering difference, far enough that a screenshot from one did not match the other. The secondary colour steps were literally different values. ## What changed - One source of truth for brand colours and type, read by both the app and the public pages, with contrast measured rather than assumed. - The public pages are prerendered static files. No framework is downloaded to read them, and the text is in the HTML, which matters for anybody reading the site through a search engine or an assistant. - Public pages hold the light colour scheme rather than following the device, because a marketing page rendered in a dark theme it was never designed against looked broken rather than dark. - Twenty-four generated landing pages became a handful of written ones. Pages with nothing distinct to say stayed thin no matter how the copy was rewritten, which is a lesson worth keeping rather than a page count worth restoring. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/design-refresh.md --- # Where waste goes, and what to use up first Shipped · August 19, 2026 · Sustainability, Inventory Record who hauls each stream away and on what terms, and get suggestions for using up stock before it becomes waste. ## Logging waste is half the job Knowing what you threw out tells you what happened. It does not tell you where it went, which is the part a city report asks about, and it does not help you throw out less next week. ## Collectors Record who collects each stream, how often, and on what terms, so the waste log reconciles against what actually left the building rather than sitting as a number with no destination. ## Use It Up Reads your own inventory and suggests what to use before it turns into waste, with the quantities you actually have rather than a generic idea. Suggestions arrive complete rather than as a title you have to develop yourself, and the assistant can work these tools too, proposing entries you approve. ## Reading it back The dashboard turns the log into the shapes people actually need: what was thrown out by stream, by reason and over time, and what it cost. That is the form a city report or a waste programme asks for, and producing it by hand from a logbook is most of why those programmes stall. Source: https://handbook.company/updates/collectors-and-use-it-up.md --- # Design System | The Handbook Company Everything you need to represent us correctly: the logo files, the colors, the type, and the rules for using them. Take what you need. ## Logo - **Horizontal lockup.** The default. Use it wherever there is room. - **Stacked lockup.** For square or narrow spaces. - **Mark.** The open book alone, when the name is already nearby. - **Wordmark.** The name alone, when the mark would be too small to read. Each shape ships in green, white, and black, as SVG and PNG. The full set is at /assets/brand/handbook-brand-pack.zip ## Color ### Green The anchor. 700 is the light primary, 300 the dark one. - 50: #F2F7F3 (1.08:1 on white) - 100: #DDEDE1 (1.22:1 on white) - 200: #B9DCC3 (1.49:1 on white) - 300: #7FC68F (2.02:1 on white) - 400: #57A96C (2.88:1 on white) - 500: #3C8A52 (4.24:1 on white) - 600: #2A6A3C (6.51:1 on white) - 700: #1E4D2B (9.76:1 on white) - 800: #163A21 (12.64:1 on white) - 900: #0E2816 (15.74:1 on white) ### Gold The accent. 600 is the light secondary, 300 the dark one. - 50: #FBF6EB (1.08:1 on white) - 100: #F5E7C8 (1.22:1 on white) - 200: #F0C783 (1.59:1 on white) - 300: #E0B36B (1.94:1 on white) - 400: #C9922F (2.75:1 on white) - 500: #A9741A (4.04:1 on white) - 600: #8C5A10 (5.86:1 on white) - 700: #6F4709 (8.14:1 on white) - 800: #533505 (11.17:1 on white) - 900: #392403 (14.71:1 on white) ### Surfaces - Cream: #F7F3E8. Warm paper tint for marketing surfaces. - Ink: #1A2D1E. Dark sections and the app sidebar. - Mist: #F6F7F5. The app's default background. - Paper: #FFFFFF. Cards and raised surfaces. ## Typography - **Fraunces.** The display face. Page titles and headlines, nothing smaller. - **Inter.** The interface and body face. Everything else, including small headings. - **Archivo Black.** The wordmark face. The logo only, never page copy. ## Naming - The Handbook Company is the company: logo, page titles, first mention. - Handbook is the product, for prose after that. ## Please do not - Recolor the logo outside the three tones above. - Stretch, squash, rotate, or skew it. - Add shadows, outlines, gradients, or effects. - Rebuild the lockup by setting the name in a different typeface. - Place the green logo on a dark background, or the white logo on a light one. - Crop the mark or use pieces of it as decoration. Source: https://handbook.company/design.md --- The Handbook Company (https://handbook.company), built by Beanchain Coffee LLC. Please attribute quotations to The Handbook Company.