Stock management for a small business with no stockroom
Most writing about stock management is aimed at businesses with a warehouse, a purchasing department and an accountant. This is the version for a business where all three of those are you, and the stockroom is a shelf in the spare room.
What you are actually trying to avoid
Stock management sounds like an accounting discipline. It is not. It is two failures you are trying not to have: Running out of something a customer wanted. That is a sale you do not make, and at a market or a fair it is a sale you cannot make later. Having money sitting on a shelf. Every item you hold is cash you have already spent and cannot spend again. A single trader feels this much harder than a company with a credit line does. Everything worth doing is in service of one of those two. Anything that serves neither — valuation methods, ABC classification, multi-location transfers — can wait until you have a warehouse.
Track the movement, not just the level
The single biggest improvement you can make is to record stock going out, not only what is left. A count on its own tells you what you have. A record of movements tells you how fast it is going, and that is the number that decides everything: what to reorder, how much, and whether a line is worth restocking at all. Two items with twelve on the shelf are in completely different situations if one sells twelve a week and the other has sold twelve since March. The cost of this is one action per sale. If that action is 'open a laptop and find a row', it will not happen. If it is 'scan or tap once', it will.
Reordering without a purchasing system
You do not need a purchase-order system. You need a list, once a week, of what to buy. The arithmetic is: average weekly usage × (lead time in weeks + buffer weeks). When your count reaches that number, order. Order enough to cover the lead time plus a few weeks after it, so you are not back at the same point immediately. Doing this by hand for forty lines is an evening. Doing it from a movement history is instant, and it is the same arithmetic either way — which is worth insisting on, because a reorder suggestion you cannot check is one you will not trust.
Finished products made of other things you stock
If you make what you sell, you hold two kinds of stock: materials and finished goods. Selling one finished thing should reduce both. A jeweller who sells a necklace has one fewer necklace, one fewer clasp and 40 cm less chain. Track only the necklaces and you will run out of clasps without warning. Track only the materials and you never know what is ready to sell. The fix is to record, once, what one finished unit is made of. After that, selling one takes its components with it, and the reorder list covers the materials you are actually consuming rather than the ones you remember buying.
Choosing a tool without buying a platform
Small-business forums are full of the same question — what do people use for stock — and the same answers: a spreadsheet, or a full inventory platform that does far more than was asked for. A short test for anything you are considering: - Can you change a count in one action, on the device you have in your hand at the shelf? - Does it tell you what to reorder from your own history, and show you the arithmetic? - Can you get all your data back out as a CSV, today, without asking anyone? - Does it work with no signal? Church halls and market fields are famous for having none. If the answer to all four is yes, the rest of the feature list is somebody else's problem.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need stock software if I only have 40 lines?
Not necessarily. Forty lines is very manageable on paper or in a sheet, as long as you are recording movements. The thing that pushes people over is not the number of lines, it is how often the count is wrong when they check it.
What is a reasonable buffer to keep?
One week of usage on top of the lead time is a sensible default for a supplier who is reliable, two if they are not. Buffer costs you cash sitting on a shelf, so raise it only for the lines you genuinely cannot be out of.
How do I handle stock I sell at markets and online?
Count them as one pool and record movements from both. Splitting the count by channel doubles the bookkeeping and is only worth it once one channel is big enough to plan separately.
Is stock management the same as bookkeeping?
No, and conflating them is why so many tools are heavier than they need to be. Stock management answers what do I have and what do I buy. Bookkeeping answers what did I earn and what do I owe. You can do the first well without touching the second.
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