Inventory software for a small shop: keep stock simple

A gift shop, a hardware shop, a deli or a bike shop doesn’t need what Amazon needs. You need to answer four questions quickly: how many have I got, when do I reorder, from whom, and what’s not selling?

Everything else (bin locations, batch tracking, multi-warehouse transfers) is either for larger businesses or for specific trades. Food businesses need use-by dates and allergens; a wine shop might want vintages. Most shops don’t.

• name and a short code or barcode;
• category, so you can see what sells by area of the shop;
• cost price (excluding VAT) and selling price;
• quantity on hand;
• reorder level: the quantity at which you want to be warned;
• reorder quantity: how many you normally order;
• supplier and their product code;
• variants if needed: sizes, colours, flavours.

The reorder level is the single most useful number. Set it to what you sell between ordering and receiving, plus a little margin. If you sell ten bags of compost a week and the supplier delivers in a week, reorder at about fifteen.

1. Pick your top products. Use last year’s sales or your instinct: the 50 or 100 lines that make most of the money, and the ones that are painful to run out of.
2. Count them properly, once, on a quiet morning or after closing.
3. Set reorder levels for those, even roughly. You’ll refine them after a month.
4. Record deliveries and sales from today. Deliveries add, sales subtract.
5. Add the next batch of products over the following weeks.

Trying to load every product on day one is the most common reason small shops give up on stock control. Partial and accurate beats complete and wrong.

Even with perfect software, numbers drift: breakages, theft, items given away, deliveries entered twice. A full stock take once a year, usually at your year end, is what your accountant needs for the stock figure in your accounts.

Between full counts, a rolling count works well: count one category every week. Over a few months the whole shop gets checked without closing. When a count differs a lot from the system, it’s worth asking why: a supplier short-delivering, or a product that walks out of the door.

If you use an EPOS system such as Square, Lightspeed, Epos Now, Shopify POS or SumUp, stock control is usually built in, and every sale reduces the quantity automatically. That’s the best place for it, and adding a second system would mean keeping two sets of numbers.

Separate inventory software makes sense when:

• you use a simple card reader and cash, with no EPOS;
• you sell at markets, events or wholesale as well as in the shop;
• you make what you sell (candles, cakes, soap) and need to track raw materials;
• you need information the till can’t hold, such as supplier price lists, consignment stock or customer orders waiting for collection.

Most small shops buy from a handful of wholesalers and a long tail of small makers. Each has its own minimum order, delivery day and lead time, and keeping all of that in your head is how orders get missed before a bank holiday.

• record each supplier’s minimum order, delivery days and usual lead time;
• group the “to order” list by supplier, so one look tells you whether you’ve reached the minimum;
• record each order when you place it, with what you expect to receive;
• when the delivery arrives, check it against the order before adding it to stock: short deliveries and substitutions are common;
• note the supplier’s invoice number so it matches your accounts at month end.

Plan for seasonal peaks well ahead. A gift shop needs its Christmas stock ordered in September or October, a garden centre its bedding plants in late winter. A simple note on each supplier (“order Christmas lines by 30 September”) is worth more than any clever forecast.

Finally, watch the money. Stock is cash on a shelf, and paying a wholesaler in 30 days for products you sell in 90 squeezes your cash flow. The slow-movers list in the next section is how you spot it early.

• Best-sellers: never let them run out.
• Slow movers: products that haven’t sold in 90 days are cash sitting on a shelf. Discount, bundle or stop reordering.
• Stock value at cost: how much money is tied up.
• Margin by category: which part of the shop really pays the rent.

Four numbers, once a month, with a cup of tea. That’s enough to run a small shop better than most.

Yes. With Plannify you describe your shop (“products with sizes and colours, suppliers, reorder levels, a to-order list and customer orders waiting for collection”) and a team of AI agents builds the software around it. Quantities and stock value are calculated, never typed by hand, and the first page shows what’s below its reorder level. You can ask it to import your product list from Excel, and change anything by writing in the chat.

If you also want to sell online, you can build an online shop with a basket and checkout; orders work with collection, delivery and bank transfer, and card payments through your own Stripe account. Read more about building business software.