r/InventoryManagement

Hey all. I've recently been tasked with creating an inventory system for a local amusement company, however they currently have 0 current inventory management systems in place. I have little experience with inventory management, so I'm looking for some assistance in what type of software would be applicable. I'll describe the workflow of the company below.

Machines enter the warehouse -->

Parts and locks are used to get machines ready for install -->

Machines are supplied with prizes -->

Machines are sent out for install

The main types of items that need to be in some sort of inventory system are parts & prizes. I believe the majority of items would be stored as bulk "Crane Prizes" or "Plush", rather than specific items. I am overwhelmed looking at all the software online, so some recommendations would be helpful. Thank you.

Genuinely curious how bad this is at other places, because I suspect everyone quietly has a number they don't talk about.

Every plant I've worked in has had some drift between the recorded stock and the physical stock. Sometimes it's small and boring. Sometimes you do a full count and find out you've been planning production off a number that was wrong for four months.

What I'm curious about:

• Roughly how far off are you at a typical count? 1%? 5%? Worse?
• Where does it actually come from — issuing without recording, scrap not booked, wrong location, theft, unit-of-measure mistakes?
• Did anyone fix it properly, or did you just get better at counting more often?

I've noticed the size of the gap has very little to do with how expensive the system is. Some of the tightest control I've seen was a plant running paper cards, because one person owned it and cared. Some of the worst was a full ERP where nobody trusted the numbers so everyone kept their own side spreadsheet.

Interested in whether that matches other people's experience or whether I've just worked in badly run places.

I operate a small brick-and-mortar retail store business in Thailand, and I have been running everything on Excel for years. It has worked okay when our product SKU and stock is only a few hundred, but now that we have more stock moving, it is becoming a real headache. I am looking for a simple inventory system that can help with purchase orders, barcode scanning, low stock alerts, and basic reporting. I don't need anything super complex or expensive. I just want something that will save me time and stop me from running out of my best sellers without realizing it.

What are you all using in your stores? I would love to hear some real recommendations from people who actually use the software day-to-day. Thanks in advance.

• Low-stock alerts and replenishment suggestions
• Easier inventory workflows for staff
• Integration with POS and/or other business systems

I've been looking at a few options, including Zoho, Inflow, and Ailit because the general feature set seems close to what I'm after, but I don't have enough hands-on experience with different platforms to know what actually works well in a real retail environment.

If you run a physical retail store, what inventory software are you using? What do you like or dislike about it, and are there any tools you'd strongly recommend or avoid?

I'd especially appreciate hearing from people who have actually used the software in their store operations.

I'm a reliability/maintenance engineer at a chemical plant, and I've seen the same pattern described in a recent thread here — one site scrambling to reorder a part while another site has it sitting unused. What I haven't seen discussed as much is the layer underneath that: most plants set reorder points based on static rules (min/max, safety stock) rather than actual failure and work-order history.

In our world specifically, a lot of "excess" inventory isn't really excess — it's a critical spare for a piece of equipment that fails rarely but catastrophically when it does. Treating that the same as a slow-moving commodity part (just by looking at "hasn't moved in 6 months") leads to the wrong call either way — either you strip out something you genuinely need on hand, or you keep hoarding things that don't matter.

Curious if anyone here in process/chemical/industrial manufacturing specifically has tied spare parts stocking decisions to actual failure frequency and criticality, rather than just visibility/location tracking. Is that happening anywhere in practice, or is it still mostly manual judgment calls by whoever's been at the plant the longest?

Hi all,

I've been searching for the last couple of weeks and haven't found anything that's quite right, most systems seem to be orientated to online stores, and I'm hoping someone out there can help.

We organise live events all over the UK and Europe using equipment that we own. We'll load trucks and send different equipment to different events, with 95% of it returning back to the same warehouse, the rest being consumables that get used at the events.

I'd really like some help with keeping track of what is in each flight case/pallet with our consumable items that we need to re-order and make sure we have enough of, of what items are where (if any items have been borrowed from other cases for certain events for example)

Something that can help us to load trucks and produce plans if we enter the dimensions of each flight case - currently we're doing that manually so that would be amazing.

Also to maintain an accurate inventory of what exactly is in the warehouse, the values, a copy of the invoice, any other data fields we may need, and in general any tools that could help us maintain it easier. Currently we're using Google Sheets to track what items are in which flight cases, which is working okay, but I'm curious about things being easier.

Thank you, any help is greatly appreciated.

Spreadsheets can work surprisingly well when the business is small.

The problem starts when stock changes throughout the day and several storefronts are taking orders from the same inventory.

A manual update might only take a minute but repeating that process all day creates another problem. Someone eventually forgets one update and the numbers stop matching.

There is also the question of whether replacing a spreadsheet with software actually makes things simpler or just adds another system to maintain.

For people who have made that switch, what finally convinced you that the spreadsheet was no longer enough?

I am an outsourced accountant and I am trying to find an inventory system or a process for my client who collects advanced prepayments on all his orders prior to ordering the product. It is a B2B custom apparel business, bulk orders. The client currently uses QuickBooks Online. He issues invoices when customers place orders with him and collects payments prior to getting the product. These invoices should NOT be counted as sales at this point - not until the actual delivery to his customers. I manually review these against his shipping logs every month and record an adjustment to show actual completed sales vs future/unshipped/deferred revenue.

I am looking to propose an inventory management system to him (also need to improve COGS visibility and inventory tracking) but I am hoping to find one that will help with these presales. Any recommendations? Any tips? How are other small - mid-size businesses handling these situations? If you are dealing with the same scenario please share how you make your accounting work in the most efficient manner.

We ran out of two of our best sellers way earlier than expected last Christmas and I promised myself I wouldn't make the same mistake again

Now I'm building this year's order and apparently my solution is to make the opposite mistake because the quantities in my cart are starting to look insane

Some of this stuff needs to be ordered months ahead so waiting to see what sells isn't really an option. How do you decide what's enough without accidentally turning your back room into a warehouse until February?

I've got a large amount of microphones I hire out.

I'm currently keeping track using a spreadsheet. Where they go. Who's got them. How long. If they've paid.

I'd be really interested in automating some of the process, or making it easier at least.

Obviously free / low cost preferred.

Advice welcomed!

Hey everyone,

Between supplier price swings and constant invoice tweaks, keeping an eye on actual unit costs across our weekly deliveries is starting to feel like a full-time job on its own.

Just curious how you all are managing invoice processing and COGS tracking day-to-day without sinking hours into it?

Are you guys still manually plugging line items into spreadsheets, using built-in POS inventory, or running dedicated invoice/OCR tools? Also, how often are you actually catching supplier price hikes before they eat into your margins—weekly audits, or just when your monthly prime cost percentage looks off?

Would love to hear what workflow or setup has actually worked for your team to keep track of ingredient price fluctuations without adding endless admin time every week. Appreciate any insights!

I'm a forklift operator, not a developer.

At work we handle something like 115,000 items a month and traceability is basically... paper.

We don't actually have that many errors, which almost makes it worse. When a customer finds one, suddenly everyone is angry, we're going to make procedures, meetings happen, solutions are discussed...

Then nothing happens because the problem doesn't happen again for a while.

Until it does.

A lot of the mistakes don't even come from us. We work from Excel files coming from above, sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes customers desperately need something and take it before it's properly registered. And we can somehow have the same product with 3 or 4 different delivery dates. Sending something too early can actually be a problem too.

So I got annoyed and made a small Android app for our team.

I'm literally a forklift operator who started coding because I wanted to stop sending stupid mistakes to customers.

And... it worked.

People were using it every day. Management saw it working and basically told me:

"Wow, this actually works really well on Android, you should keep working on it."

Then:

"But we'll probably never be able to make it official. IT already has trouble approving an Excel macro."

Fair enough 😂

Then one day a coworker told me my app was useless.

Which was interesting because he was using it every day.

So I thought OK.

I sent an email saying basically: test successful, management has seen that it works, I'm removing the app now.

The next day.

Literally the next day.

Same coworker: "You need to do something, the old system is putting us in the s***."

So anyway, management is still looking for a solution.

Volume has gone up, but customer complaints have gone up even faster.

And we're back to paper and highlighters.

I wish I was joking.

Anyone had something similar happen at work? I'm curious how it ended for you.

Hello

I have an auto parts shop and thinking of add inventory/billing software.There are so many options like Vyapar, Marg, Busy, etc., so it's hard to know what's actually good in day-to-day use.If you own an auto parts business, what are you using? What's good about it and what do you hate about it?

My biggest issue is keeping track of stock because there are thousands of parts and it's easy to miss things. Fast billing is also important.

Not looking for ads or sales pitches. Just want to hear from people who actually use these softwares.

Thanks.

I've had calls with GOIS and Fishbowl recently. Looking for thoughts on those and other systems.

We are a DTC brand selling perishable pet food, so we need lot tracking and COA documentation, raw material inventory tracking at suppliers and several co-mans, finished goods inventory at co-mans and 3PLs. We currently get everything reported in via email (PDF and Excel reports), but want something more automated that we can potentially integrate with partners through API/FTP/EDI. Bonus if it can track sales and ingest lot numbers from DTC fulfillment. Oh, and we're going to be selling in Amazon via SFP too, so integration there too

Hey everyone, back with another big issue at our store.

We sell hardware to regular shoppers at the counter, but we also sell in bulk to contractors out of the back room. Because everything moves so fast, our inventory count is almost always wrong.

Here is what keeps going wrong for us:

• Orders getting sold off the floor: A trade account calls in an order for pickup later that afternoon. We write it down or put it in the system, but until someone physically walks into the warehouse to pull it onto a staging pallet, those items are still sitting on the shelf. A walk-in customer comes in, buys them at the counter, and by the time our warehouse guy goes to fulfil the trade order, the shelf is empty.
• Unit of measure errors: We buy hardware in bulk crates, but sell it as individual units, 10-packs, or full master cartons. Staff often scan the outer box barcode when a customer is only buying one inner pack, or vice versa. The system ends up showing negative stock on boxes while showing dozens of single units that don't actually exist on the shelf.
• Bad reorder points: Because our system doesn't track pending quotes, backorders, or multi-pack conversions properly, our inventory reports are completely unreliable. We end up spending hours every week manually counting high-turnover items on the floor just so we don't accidentally miss a supplier reorder deadline.

Our team is constantly stressed, and our customers are getting annoyed when we run out of stock.

For anyone running a shop that does both retail and trade sales:

• How do you keep your inventory numbers updated in real time so counter staff and warehouse staff see the same stock?
• What software do you use that easily handles selling both single items and full boxes without messing up the total count?

Any advice or software suggestions would be awesome!

I've been looking into this for a small manufacturing operation and the main thing I'm trying to avoid is having production planning in one place and inventory/material availability in another.

A few options I've come across:

• MRPeasy - geared towards small and growing manufacturers. Covers production planning, MRP, purchasing and inventory.
• Katana - more focused on real-time inventory visibility and production management. Seems particularly suited to smaller operations.
• Odoo - much broader ERP, so makes more sense if you also want accounting, CRM, sales, purchasing, etc. in the same system.
• ERPNext - open-source option with manufacturing, inventory and purchasing. More flexibility, but potentially more setup.
• Fishbowl - strong on inventory and warehouse management, with manufacturing functionality as well.

For anyone actually using these, how well do they keep inventory and production planning synced in practice?

I'm more interested in the day-to-day experience than feature lists. Especially when materials run short or a production schedule changes.

I work for a small business selling OEM auto parts (3 employees). I have been keeping inventory via spreadsheet, which works decent. Looking at investing in a software to manage inventory. Majority of what we do is simple in/out of goods. We stock ~2000 SKUs. I would like something that has scanning functionality (all parts have a barcode from the manufacture). The ability for bin locations. Would like to be able to load incoming and outgoing orders via spreadsheet and match to what was scanned, showing any overs and shorts. Additionally, ability to forecast or enter a safety stock and see on order qty would be a bonus. We have one warehouse and one warehouse worker, so simplicity would be great. Scalability always a plus I used to work for a Fortune 50 retailer and these are some of the things that were helpful...obviously we do not have the capital they had. I don't even know where to begin to look. Appreciate any options or ideas.

Disclosure up front: I'm the founder of an inventory software company (SKU.io), so read this with that bias. No links in this post and nothing in it needs my product. I had the data sitting there and figured this sub might find it interesting.

The data: we record our sales and onboarding calls, and 146 of them are tagged for internal research. Mostly operators doing $1M-$50M across Shopify + Amazon plus some wholesale. 33 of the 146 got into the spreadsheet or Excel layer that actually runs their purchasing and inventory. I went back through those and sorted what people said into buckets.

The thing that surprised me: almost nobody says the math is wrong. The formulas mostly work. The sheet dies operationally. Ranked by how often it came up - the top four each showed up in at least five separate calls:

1. It depends on one person. "We have someone three days a week who just produces manual reports." A guy quits and leaves behind five spreadsheets of tabs nobody else can read. One founder at around $25M told me his fear isn't the formula, it's that somebody forgets to update a macro and everything downstream is quietly wrong for days.

2. It drifts from physical reality. One buyer did a physical count during due diligence on a business and it came back at about two and a half times what the sheet said. Damaged and defective stock is the usual leak - the warehouse floor knows, the sheet doesn't. The year-end count vs the sheet is where "we thought we were profitable" goes to die.

3. Costs move and the sheet doesn't. This one has gotten noticeably worse since tariffs. Same product, one container lands at $5/unit freight, the next one at $3. Cost layers maintained by hand. Change one FOB price and there are four other tabs that were supposed to inherit it.

4. The math outgrows the sheet. A reorder pass that takes one full day, once a month. 2,400 SKUs where changing a growth assumption means editing 2,400 rows. One ops person described allocating a single PO across warehouses as "apparently asking for a Nobel prize in math."

5. Concurrency. Two wholesale reps entering orders at 11pm off the same sheet, both seeing the same available stock. That oversell happened without anyone typing a wrong number.

And the bill for all of the above shows up as inventory, never as "a spreadsheet problem": eight months of cover sitting on one product. Close to $100K in overstock. One team tracked weeks-of-cover by hand, weekly, and still ended up with 8,298 units past 52 weeks of cover. Stockouts on the bestseller while cash sits in the slow movers. One seller put it flatly: "I think most people don't truly calculate the cost of running out of stock."

If I had to compress the whole pile: a spreadsheet is a snapshot pretending to be a system. It doesn't know anything happened until a human tells it, and the humans are busy.

Curious whether the folks here on the warehouse and manufacturing side see the same ranking. I'd guess the failure modes are different when you control the whole building.

Right now, it's not an ideal time for me to hire a new full-time employee. I just need help with inventory, preferably an automated one so that I don't have to micromanage it. I've already got store personnel jumping around one branch to another just to keep tabs on stocks and get missing items if a customer is buying at the branch where stock ran out. I need a software that's easy to use so that anyone in both branches can keep it updated.