Canning inventory sheet: A free printable for your jars

Updated October 17, 2026

A canning inventory sheet is a paper list of your home-canned jars, with space for the product, processed date, jar size, quantity, jar location, used and remaining. Add a tally when you take a jar, then subtract the tally from the starting quantity to update what remains.

A sheet beside the jars can be easier to keep up with than a notebook you have to go and find. Take a jar, make a pencil mark, and the record is there for the next person who checks.

We’re building The Cantry for digital records, but paper may be a better fit for where you keep your jars. Our free canning inventory sheet gives you a place to start.

Filling in the sheet

Give each batch its own line. If you’ve canned green beans on several dates, keep those batches separate so you can match a jar’s label to the entry. Split a batch across lines when the jars are in different sizes or places.

The columns are:

• Product. What’s in the jars, using a name you’ll recognize later.
• Processed date. The date you processed the batch.
• Jar size. Pint, quart, half-pint, or another size you use.
• Quantity. The number of jars you’re starting the entry with.
• Jar location. Where you’ll find them, such as “Hall closet” or “Basement, shelf A.”
• Used. A tally of jars you’ve opened, given away, or discarded.
• Remaining. The quantity minus the used tally.

Leave the starting quantity as it is while you add tally marks. Write the remaining count in pencil so you can update it without changing the record of what you began with.

Keep recipe sources and fuller batch notes in your canning log. The sheet is for checking what’s on hand; the canning inventory guide explains how those records fit together.

A filled-in example

The tomato sauce entry below started with 14 quarts. Its tally shows 12 used, leaving 2. The raspberry jam hasn’t been marked yet, so all 12 half-pints remain.

The blank sheet is a one-page PDF, free to print and copy for your own use.

Making the tally easy to keep up

Put a pencil with the sheet and keep both where they’re convenient to use. If someone else in the household takes jars, show them where to make the mark.

When you take a jar, check the product and processed date against its entry. That matters when there are several batches of the same food. Mark the line for the batch and place you took it from.

Jars given as gifts get tally marks too. If you want to know how many jars your household ate, add a small note for gifts or discarded jars beside the tally. They all reduce what’s on hand, but you may want to distinguish them when planning next season.

If you move some jars to another room, update the location and counts. When the sheet gets crowded, copy the entries that still have jars remaining onto a fresh page and keep the old sheet with your records.

When paper works well

A printed sheet can stay beside the jars without power or a connection. You can check it at a glance, and someone else can update it without learning an app.

You’ll work out the remaining counts yourself. To check the list while you’re out, you can take a photo of the current sheet. With jars spread over several rooms, a spreadsheet or app may make it easier to see the whole collection together.

Spreadsheet, paper or app compares those options if you’re deciding which to use.

Taking your paper records into The Cantry

Your sheet also gives you the details for entering jars you already have into The Cantry: product, processed date, jar size, jar location and remaining count. If you only know the year a batch was canned, you can enter the year.

After that, logging a new batch adds its jars to your inventory. Mark jars used as you open them, give them away, or discard them, with gifted or discarded as an optional reason. The Cantry updates the remaining count from those entries, so you won’t be adding up tally marks.