Venheim
Inspector with a clipboard going through a list with a chef

HACCP · Temperature · Cleaning · Best-before

HACCP software: keep records digitally – temperature, cleaning, best-before

Record temperatures per appliance, cleaning and shift checklists and best-before batches in one place. They become the monthly HACCP record as an Excel file — sent automatically by email if you like. For small food businesses in Austria and Germany.

Start free

Try Premium for 30 days, no payment details. After that your business carries on free on the Start plan; records stay readable and exportable.

The sign-up form is in German for now. Inside the app, everyone picks their own language — nine languages, English included.

In short

HACCP software replaces the paper slips of own-check monitoring: the team records temperatures, cleaning and best-before dates in the app on their own phones, every entry carries person and time, and the monthly record builds itself as an Excel file. Before an inspection, a dry run across nine areas shows what is still missing. With Venheim this mandatory recording is free for good — also after the trial.

The dutyRegulation (EC) 852/2004

The HACCP own-check duty

Under EU Regulation 852/2004 on food hygiene, every food business must put in place a permanent procedure based on the HACCP principles — identify hazards, monitor critical control points and document the monitoring. For a hospitality business that means, in concrete terms: proving the cold chain, showing the cleaning and keeping an eye on shelf life. The regulation applies directly in Austria and Germany alike. What is required is not only that you do it, but that you can prove it.

The daily entries add up to a level you can read in a second — should it come to it, the entries underneath are the proof.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
Day to daythree tasks, one record

Where the record is made: at the basin, at the stove, on the tablet

  • 06:58 · Start of shiftWash hands before it startsThe matching hygiene training sits in the academy — with date and next due date.
  • 11:42 · Core temperatureMeasure and record straight awayThe value is stored with person and time. If it is out of range, it becomes an incident with room for the action taken.
  • Month end · RecordThe month is already doneThe entries become the Excel file for the inspection — by email automatically if you like.
How it worksthree kinds of records

What the HACCP software documents: three kinds of records

1. Temperature

A temperature check per appliance (chilling, freezing, hot holding). The appliance list is dynamic — new appliances appear automatically in reports and Excel. Limit breaches are flagged and can be completed with a corrective action. The target range travels into the record at the time of measurement: since the end of August every reading carries its own target range, so a limit lowered later does not turn older readings red after the fact. Rows from before that are still assessed against today's limit — and the sheet says exactly that. What a night with sensors, curve and corrective action looks like on the control desk is shown on the page Temperatures on the control desk (German).

2. Cleaning

Cleaning and shift checklists the team signs off — with person and time on the entry, and with a photo of the finished task if you like: the manager then sees the cleaned drain in the app, not just that someone ticked a box. In the monthly export the tick stands with person and time; the picture stays on the entry. There is a separate page on digital cleaning records.

3. Best-before & batches

Keep best-before dates and batches, document waste with reason and quantity. At goods receipt the best-before batch is created with the approval — on the principle “first expiring, first out”. Step by step with sources: best-before check (German).

Every batch with expiry date and traffic light — what expires first is at the top, and the decision about it is documented instead of made silently.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
Monthly recordExcel, automatically

The monthly record — automatically

From temperatures, cleaning and best-before dates Venheim builds a monthly HACCP record as a formatted Excel file. If you like, it goes out by email automatically at the start of the month. In an inspection the record is there at once instead of being searched for.

So that the month actually fills up, the app guides the day: every task can carry a time window and a responsible person, what is due between 06:00 and 10:00 is at the front in the morning — and whatever is still open in the early evening reports itself to the manager instead of lying quietly until the inspection.

  • Properly formatted Excel record (not a raw data dump)
  • Optional automatic monthly sending
  • Control score and open action points in the reports
  • Entries added offline appear as “submitted late” on the record

Mandatory recording stays free — on the Start plan already

Recording temperatures, cleaning sign-offs, best-before dates and waste and downloading the record as Excel: that works on the Start plan for €0 — and stays usable even with an expired subscription. HACCP is a legal duty; a business must never be prevented from keeping its records. From Pro, automatic monthly sending and the reports with the control score are added.

No signal in the cold room? No problem.

Clocking in and out, temperatures, cleaning and maintenance ticks, stocktake counts and inspection dates work without a connection — the app can even be restarted with no signal. Every entry keeps the time it was tapped and is sent automatically later: time-clock entries for up to 3 days, everything else for up to 7 days. Nothing is thrown away. Approvals, orders, reports and chat need a connection — they depend on data only the server knows at the moment of the decision.

Hundreds of entries grouped by day, each with person and time — and an entry that only came in later from a dead zone says so.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
Inspection viewnine areas

The inspection view — the business as an inspection would see it

The awkward question always comes at the wrong moment: what would an inspector find today? The inspection view answers it beforehand. It puts nine areas side by side — temperatures, cleaning, resolved incidents, best-before dates, deadlines, training, studio checks, working time and receipts —, names the legal basis for Austria and Germany for each, and writes the way to fix each finding next to it: “Two batches expired five days ago” does not stand alone there, but with the button that leads to the best-before page where they are closed.

A dry run that records nothing

The view has not a single input field: it reads, calculates and refers. Opening it changes nothing on the records — fixing happens on the page where the task belongs anyway, so that there is no second way of writing record data.

What does not apply is left out

A café without gym equipment gets no deduction for missing studio checks: the area is left out with a reason, and the remaining weights are redistributed. A score that pulls a business down for something that does not concern it would not be an assessment but noise.

Versioned, with an effective date

When an area is added, it applies from its effective date — July keeps the version that applied in July. Otherwise a month that has long been with the tax advisor would get a different grade overnight without anything having changed in the business.

What the score is not is written on it: an internal self-assessment from the business's own records, not an official verdict and not confirmation from any authority. This sentence is on the screen and on every printout — a tooltip never appears on paper, and paper is exactly what the business shows in an inspection.

The score says what it is: calculated, by which version, since when it applies. Every area names its legal basis and its weight — and whatever does not apply to this business is visibly left out instead of quietly costing points.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
Inspector accessread only, time-limited

The inspector is at the door — you hand over the tablet, not a stack of folders

The food authority arrives in the middle of the lunch rush. Instead of searching for folders and sorting slips, the inspector gets their own read-only access: a link that shows exactly the record pages — temperatures, cleaning, training, documents and best-before dates — and nothing else. No dictating passwords, no look into the roster or the figures.

  • Read only — the lock sits in the database, not in the interface
  • Time-limited and revocable at any time — the business stays in control
  • Complete history: corrections carry a reason and a name, nothing is ever deleted

Why that builds trust

Documentation you can show without preparation is the opposite of documentation polished after the fact. That is exactly why the records in Venheim can only be corrected, never deleted — what was entered on the day of recording stays traceable, along with every later change.

That includes the inconvenient detail: two clocks are stored — the device's, at which the reading was taken, and the server's, at which the row arrived. If someone measures in the cold room without a signal and only has reception again two hours later, their reading carries the note “submitted late (+2 h)” on the record. The server time is set by the database; no device can influence it — and that is exactly what an inspection asks about.

Trainingwith due dates

Hygiene training with due dates instead of slips in a folder

Own-check monitoring includes proof that the team has been instructed. The training tracker keeps, per person, which instruction took place when and when the next one is due — with a reminder before something expires, and the record export for the inspection. The basics are available as a free online food hygiene training, without an account.

The catalogue knows the legal bases per country: in Germany the initial instruction under § 43 IfSG (Infection Protection Act, by the public health office) with the follow-up instruction in the business and hygiene training under § 4 LMHV; in Austria the instruction duties from LMSVG and § 14 ASchG. The business's own kinds of training are simply added.

Onboarding included

New people learn the routines in the built-in academy: flashcards and quizzes per business, with points and streaks; a team leaderboard is off by default and can be switched on per site. The tracker documents the mandatory instruction, the academy trains the skill — both in the same tool.

Who has been briefed on what, at a glance. What expires soon shows up yellow before it turns red — and lands in the calendar as a follow-up.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
In the logbook

The HACCP record is one building block of the digital operations logbook — together with cleaning records, time tracking and roster. To the operations logbook.

Price

One price per site, unlimited team

€39.90 Pro·€69.90 Premiumper site per month. Prices shown are final prices — as a small business under § 6 (1) no. 27 of the Austrian VAT Act (UStG), we do not charge VAT. The Start plan is free for good — with roster, time clock, chat and HACCP recording including Excel download.One-off €199.00 setup fee with monthly payment — waived with annual payment. All prices

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Questions9 answers

Frequently asked questions

What are digital HACCP records?
They are the records of own-check monitoring under the food hygiene regulation, just without slips of paper: temperatures per appliance, the signed-off cleaning and the best-before batches are recorded in the app, every entry with person and time. Corrections need a reason and stay visible, nothing is ever deleted. At the end of the month the HACCP record is built from them as an Excel file, and the inspection gets its own read-only access.
Does the software also monitor best-before dates?
Yes. At goods receipt the best-before batch is created with its expiry date. The list follows the principle “first expiring, first out” and uses a traffic light to show what expires soon and what has already expired. Whether a batch was used or discarded is recorded with reason and quantity instead of being decided silently.
How long do HACCP records have to be kept?
The law names no figure for HACCP records but an “appropriate period” (Art. 5(4) of Regulation 852/2004). In Austria the hygiene guideline for retail businesses, which also covers restaurants, is more specific: cooling records for at least one year, training records for at least three years. Because Venheim never deletes record data, only corrects or deactivates it, the history stays intact. Where the law really does name a period, the app calculates the date instead of leaving it to someone's head: the monthly package for the tax advisor states “keep at least until …” — seven years from the end of the calendar year under § 132 BAO (Austrian Federal Fiscal Code), so for a month in 2026 until 31 December 2033; in Germany ten years under § 147 AO. The HACCP record deliberately carries no such date, because there is no statutory period for it — a borrowed tax figure on a hygiene sheet would be invented certainty. The binding period is agreed between the business and the food authority.
Can I check in advance how the business would do in an inspection?
That is what the inspection view is for: it puts nine areas side by side — temperatures, cleaning, resolved incidents, best-before dates, deadlines, training, studio checks, working time and receipts —, names the legal basis for Austria and Germany for each, and writes the way to fix each finding next to it. It records nothing itself; fixing happens on the page where the task belongs anyway. The score below it is an internal self-assessment from the business's own records, not an official verdict and not confirmation from any authority. The view is reserved for managers — the read-only access for the inspector shows the records, not the self-assessment.
Is Venheim certified HACCP software?
Venheim provides the tools for documentation and the record export. There is no official seal or certification that guarantees HACCP compliance for this — and we do not claim one. Whether the documentation is sufficient in an individual case is decided by the food authority.
Do I have to keep temperatures for every fridge separately?
The appliances are a dynamic list — every newly added appliance appears automatically in recording, in the reports and in the Excel record. Past completion rates are protected by the date the appliance was added, so a new appliance does not distort the past.
Why an all-in-one app instead of a stand-alone HACCP tool?
In a business, HACCP depends on the same people and shifts as roster, time tracking and inventory. With a separate HACCP tool the team keeps a second filing system next to everything else — and lets it slide in everyday work. In the digital operations logbook the HACCP record is part of the same tool that is open every day anyway. One price per site, no extra subscription.
Do food inspectors accept digital records?
EU Regulation 852/2004 prescribes no form — what is required is that own-check monitoring is documented and verifiable. Digital records meet that when they are complete and traceable: in Venheim every entry carries person and time, corrections need a reason and stay visible, nothing is ever deleted. There is a separate read-only access for the inspection itself. Whether the documentation is sufficient in an individual case is up to the authority — to be honest, the same is true for paper.
Is the HACCP app really free?
The mandatory recording is, for good: recording temperatures, cleaning sign-offs, best-before dates and waste and downloading the monthly record as Excel works on the Start plan for €0 — and even stays usable with an expired subscription, because a business must never be prevented from keeping its statutory records. What you pay for is the processing: automatic monthly sending, reports with the control score, ordering and the monthly package for the tax advisor.

HACCP without the paperwork

Appliance and cleaning lists are there from the start and can be renamed: set up the business, check the appliances, invite the team — the first temperature is recorded the same day.

Start free

Try Premium for 30 days, no payment details. After that your business carries on free on the Start plan; records stay readable and exportable.

The sign-up form is in German for now. Inside the app, everyone picks their own language — nine languages, English included.