The Free Food Control Plan App for NZ — Free Forever
Yes — KitchenSorted's daily Food Control Plan diary is genuinely free forever: one site, two users, unlimited temperature, cleaning and receiving logs, 30 days of visible history, and no credit card. It's not a trial and there's no clock running — the daily diary stays free for as long as you run your business.
No credit card. No trial period. No "free tier ends soon" emails.
What does the free plan include?
The whole daily diary. Every record type your day-to-day Food Control Plan routine produces, with no cap on how many entries you make. If you're wondering which records an FCP actually requires, our Food Control Plan app guide maps the mandatory and optional records against MPI's February 2026 guidance.
Unlimited temperature logs
Fridge, freezer and cooking temperatures in a few taps, with out-of-range flags and corrective actions attached to the entry.
Unlimited cleaning records
Daily and deep cleans ticked off as they happen — optional under MPI's guidance — but a clear cleaning record makes verification conversations easier.
Unlimited receiving logs
Deliveries recorded as they land: supplier, food, quantity, and temperature where it applies.
1 site, 2 users
Enough for most owner-operated cafés and food trucks. Every entry is attributed to the person who made it.
30 days of visible history
The last month is always on screen. Older entries are never deleted — they unlock if you ever upgrade.
Never locked in
Your records are yours and are never deleted. PDF and spreadsheet exports live in the paid plan — and if you ever leave, ask us and we’ll send you your data.
MPI's paper record blanks are free too
Honest answer first: you don't need any app to keep Food Control Plan records. MPI publishes free printable record blanks for the Simply Safe & Suitable template — refreshed 27 February 2026, now in PDF, Word and Excel — all on MPI's forms and documents page. Paper record-keeping is legal and MPI actively supports it. If a printed pack in a ring binder suits how your kitchen runs, use it.
We keep a plain-English rundown of every current MPI record blank — and our own printable versions — on the free templates page.
When does a free app beat free paper?
When the problem isn't the price of the pad — it's the friction. The blank costs nothing either way; what costs you is the check nobody remembered at 3pm, the page that went missing in October, and the night before a verification visit spent reassembling a year of paper. Digital removes the friction, not the legality of paper:
- 1
Out-of-range temperatures get flagged on the spot, with a corrective action attached to the entry — instead of a bad number sitting silently in a column until someone reviews the sheet.
- 2
Records never go missing. No coffee-stained pages, no sheet that walked off the clipboard — every entry is filed by date automatically, findable in seconds.
- 3
Who-did-what is captured automatically. Every entry records the date, time, result and the person who did it — the kind of detail regulation 37 of the Food Regulations 2015 requires of a record — without anyone remembering to initial a box.
- 4
Reminders before a check is missed (paid plan) — a nudge before the gap appears in your records, rather than a blank row discovered a week later.
- 5
A verification pack assembled in one click (paid plan) — every record for the period your verifier asks about, in one dated PDF, instead of a night with the ring binder. See how the verification pack works.
The first three come with the free plan. And digital record-keeping itself is squarely within MPI's rules: the Record keeping guidance (February 2026) lists spreadsheets, online forms and phone-accessible online storage among acceptable ways to keep your records. MPI doesn't endorse any product, including this one.
As far as we know, KitchenSorted is the only NZ Food Control Plan record-keeping product with a free-forever plan you can sign up for yourself on the web and use from any browser (last checked 14 August 2026 — iMonitor offers a free mobile app with a sign-in web portal but no public web sign-up, and the established platforms offer trials or demos, not free plans). If that changes, tell us (or email [email protected]) and we'll update this page.
What the free plan doesn't include
Stated plainly, because that's the point of this page: 4 years of visible history, one-click verification packs and reminders live in the paid plan — NZ$390/yr + GST. Your free-plan records are never deleted; entries older than 30 days simply aren't visible until you upgrade, and they unlock the moment you do. There's also a one-off verification pack for NZ$99 + GST if you only want the assembled PDF for a single visit — the pack covers your plan's visible history, so on the free plan it contains your last 30 days.
One thing the paid plan is not: legally required. The duty to keep records for at least 4 years sits with you as the operator (regulations 36 and 81, Food Regulations 2015), and you can meet it with paper, or with the paid plan's 4 years of accessible history and exports. On the free plan your records are retained but only the last 30 days are on screen — so keep your paper system too, or upgrade when the history matters.
Free plan FAQs
Sources & review
- MPI: Forms and documents for Food Act plans and programmes (record blanks in PDF, Word and Excel)
- MPI: Record keeping guidance, February 2026 (PDF)
- Food Regulations 2015 (regs 36–37, 81–82)
Reviewed on 14 August 2026 by the KitchenSorted team. Regulatory pages are re-reviewed quarterly, and immediately when MPI announces template or policy changes. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
This page is general information, not legal or food-safety advice. Always confirm requirements with MPI, your registration authority, or your verifier.
Start Your Free Food Control Plan Diary
Free forever for the daily records — upgrade only if you want reminders, one-click verification packs and 4 years of visible history.