The problem is rarely tracking the numbers. A spreadsheet does that fine. What it doesn't do is tell you that the blue mugs will run out on Thursday, or stop two people from selling the last one.
This guide is for a small business with somewhere between 50 and 2,000 items, one to ten people touching stock, and probably a spreadsheet today.
When a spreadsheet is still enough
Keep the spreadsheet if all of this is true:
- One location.
- One or two people change it, never at the same time.
- A few hundred items or fewer.
- You can live with counting by hand to find out what's low.
Microsoft's free Excel inventory templates are a fine start. Make yours sturdier with one change: stop overwriting a "quantity" column. Record every movement as its own row (received, sold, moved, counted) with the date, item, place and quantity, and let a formula add them up per item. You get a history of every change, and a wrong number can be traced to the row that caused it.
Signs you've outgrown it
- Two people edit the file at once and one person's work disappears.
- Stock sits in more than one place: a back room, a van, a second shop.
- You sell through more than one channel, and each has its own stock count.
- You find out an item is out of stock when a customer asks for it.
- Your count never matches the spreadsheet, and nobody knows why.
Questions to answer before you compare tools
- Where do sales happen? If everything goes through Shopify or a Square till, start with the inventory built into it. A separate tool then has to stay in sync.
- Does your accountant live in QuickBooks or Xero? Then check whether the tool connects to it, and on which plan.
- How many places hold stock? Several locations push you up a plan with many vendors.
- How many people need to log in? Many tools charge per user, or cap users per plan.
- Do you need lots, expiry dates or serial numbers? Food, cosmetics and electronics usually do.
- Do you sell kits or make things from parts? Then you need bills of materials, which simple apps skip.
- Do you need barcode scanning? Only if you count or pick a lot every day.
The kinds of inventory software
Simple stock apps
Sortly is the best known. You add items with photos, sort them into folders by place, print QR labels and scan them with a phone. It is made for counting and finding things, not for purchase orders and invoices.
Sortly Free covers 100 items and one user. Advanced lists at $49 a month for 500 items and 2 users, Ultra at $149 for 2,000 items and 5 users, and Premium at $299 for 5,000 items and 8 users, with a discount for paying yearly. Every plan scans barcodes and QR codes in the app. Low-stock alerts start on Advanced, while the QuickBooks Online connection and custom roles come only with Premium.
Order and stock systems
inFlow and Zoho Inventory handle the full loop: purchase orders to suppliers, sales orders to customers, stock per warehouse and reorder points.
Zoho Inventory has a free plan for one user, one location and 50 orders a month. Standard is $29 a month per business billed yearly, or $39 monthly, for 3 users, 2 locations and 500 orders a month; barcode generation and stock counts start on Premium at $79. inFlow has no free plan, only a 14-day trial. Lite is $99 a month billed yearly, or $129 monthly, with two team members, and the plans from Core ($299) up add a required $499 onboarding fee.
Inventory inside your accounting software
If your books are in QuickBooks Online, its inventory tracking may cover simple buy-and-sell stock. It starts on the Plus plan, listed at $140 a month for 5 users. Xero's built-in inventory handles up to 4,000 tracked items. In the US, Growing at $59 a month is the realistic starting plan, and Xero's own FAQ points to add-on apps for automatic reorder points. For lots, kits or several warehouses, businesses usually add an inventory app that connects to their books.
Inventory inside your sales channel
Shopify and Square both track stock for what you sell through them. Every Shopify plan tracks stock in up to 10 locations. Square's free plan includes low-stock alerts; stock counts, purchase orders and barcode labels need Square Plus, at $49 a month per location. If one channel is all you have, this is the cheapest answer.
All-in-one business software
Odoo covers inventory, sales, purchasing, accounting and much more in one system. Its One App Free offer makes any single app, such as Inventory, free for unlimited users. Adding a second app moves you to a paid plan priced per user. The catch is setup. Odoo can be made to work almost any way, so someone has to decide how it should work for you and configure it.
Build your own
Airtable, Glide and similar tools have inventory templates you can adapt. They fit when your stock works in an unusual way, such as rentals, consignment or made-to-order parts. You do the building, and you own the mistakes.
The tools side by side
| Best for | Free plan | Paid from | Watch for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet | One place, one or two people | Yes | Free | Two people editing at once |
| Sortly | Counting and finding items | 100 items, 1 user | $49 a month | QuickBooks and custom roles only on the $299 plan |
| Zoho Inventory | Orders and stock, several warehouses | 1 user, 50 orders a month | $29 a month, billed yearly | Barcodes and stock counts from $79 |
| inFlow | Wholesale and B2B orders | No, 14-day trial | $99 a month, billed yearly | $499 onboarding from the $299 plan up |
| QuickBooks Online | Simple stock next to your books | No inventory on the free tier | $140 a month (Plus) | Inventory only from Plus |
| Odoo | Running the whole business in one system | One app free, any number of users | Per user, once you add a second app | Setup time |
How to choose in an afternoon
Shortlist the two tools that match your answers to the questions above. Most paid plans have a free trial, so put the same test through both: twenty real items, a week of real deliveries and sales, and the two jobs you do most often, such as receiving a delivery and finding what's low. Then count the shelf. Pick the tool whose numbers match it, and that the person who will use it every day found easier.