r/InventoryManagement

I’m curious how people here handle inventory tracking day-to-day in smaller warehouses or distribution setups.

From what I’ve seen, a lot of teams are still using a mix of:

• Excel sheets
• Email / WhatsApp for internal communication
• Manual stock counts
• Separate tools for purchasing and sales

The biggest issues I keep hearing about are:

• stock not matching reality
• duplicate entries
• no real-time visibility
• too many disconnected systems

What’s actually working for you right now?

Are most people still on spreadsheets, or have you moved to dedicated systems?

Hi! Does anyone worked in relation to what the title says? If yes, what tools or formulas or even system you had practice sa excel or other free software to make things easier such as

1. When to know the time to replenish or refill
2. Knowing the critical stocks

And more.. any advices or experiences will be so helpful since im a fresh grad and is learning about this as it also is my responsibility. Im from ecommerce department:(

Hi all! Looking for advice on workload management in a warehouse/3PL environment.

My team is constantly juggling ongoing projects, cycle counts, and pop-up fires — and the frustration is real across the board.

When we push for process changes with other departments, we often end up looking like the bad guys, even though we're trying to improve accuracy and flow for everyone.

Our team covers a wide range of functions — replenishment, inventory control, counting, and slotting — which means we're pulled into nearly every major project: VAS work, wholesale, fulfillment, receiving, you name it.

The workload pressure is compounded by the fact that if we don't get involved proactively, we almost always end up cleaning up a bigger accuracy mess afterward. So disengaging isn't really a realistic option.

I spend a lot of time building tooling, defining processes, and managing space efficiency on top of the day-to-day. It's a lot, and I'm trying to figure out how to better structure or communicate the team's capacity before burnout sets in.

Has anyone navigated something similar? How did you get other departments to respect inventory team bandwidth?

Hi everyone,
this situation is honestly stressing me out.
We have traffic, add-to-carts, and daily UGC content, but very few purchases, which makes me think the issue is conversion rather than awareness.
I launched a women’s fashion brand about 3 months ago and invested heavily in inventory (around $400k). We have a professional website, run paid ads, and post UGC content every day, but we’re still struggling to generate consistent sales.
I’ve lowered prices, improved the website, and keep creating content, but I feel like I’m missing something fundamental.
If you were in my position, what would you do?
Focus more on influencers?
Push harder on paid ads?
Change the offer completely?
Just keep going and give it more time?
I’d really appreciate advice from founders who have been through this before. What was the turning point for your brand?

Hi all!

I’m a stock ops manager for a large UK-based retailer, and over the last couple years I’ve noticed a lot of the biggest operational headaches we have don’t actually come from moving and processing stock, but from the bad communication and lack of accountability between stores, depots and head office.

For example:

\- We place orders that never arrive
\- Our deliveries will be cancelled or changed and it isn’t communicated
\- Our productivity systems are ridiculously inaccurate
\- sometimes you can’t even get hold of the warehouse

Sometimes you just spend more time trying to sort it out than actually doing your job. Do any of you deal with that sort of stuff? And what do you/would you do to fix it?

Thanks!

Hi everyone I hope you guys can help me out. I am interning for a large company and the department I am working for has no inventory system. I am tasked to develop an inventory and a system that holds an up to date record of the inventory. I need something that is user friendly that blue collar workers would be able to easily access and update. There is inventory across multiple sites. HELP !

Hey everyone,

I run a growing Shopify store and we’ve officially hit the point where our messy google sheets just aren't cutting it anymore for inventory forcasting. We’re starting to run out of stock on our bestsellers too often, while accidentally over-ordering our slow movers.

I’m looking for recommendations for a solid inventory forecasting tool that integrates seamlessly with shofipy.

Ideally I'm looking for something that handles accurate demand forecasting based on historical sales data, seasonality (adjusting for Q4/BFCM spikes without throwing off the rest of the year), and also purchase order creation and lead time managment... plus obviously decent pricing since we are an SME (enterprise-level pricing like NetSuite is completely out of scope for now).

I’ve briefly looked into apps like Inventory Planner, Cogsy and others, but I would love to hear some real-world experiences before commiting to a system.

What are you all using to forecast Shopify inventory? Are there any solutions I should look into, or apps I should strictly avoid?

Appreciate any advice!

Hi all!

How do you approach the material variance analysis in a backgflushing consumption model? We also have several "common" materials (i.e. they goes on several finish products), that makes harder to check also inventory adjustments at the end of the month and we to cycle counting only at the end of the year!

Hello! My name is Nathan, and I am working on an inventory application for the masses. Before I even begin development, I wanted some user feedback on what are some problems that people have. From my own personal experience, it has to be tracking inventory that you already have and keep track of it before you have to buy more. What are your guys' thoughts? I just wanted some feedback before I spend the hours making something that no one would use. I appreciate it! If this doesn't belong on this Reddit, please let me know, and I can take it down 😄

We've got Power BI, a planning tool, and one of those "control tower" things that cost a fortune and mostly just tells me what already went wrong. like ok, great, the truck's already late, thanks.

Then we have meetings, figure out what it means, and make the call. And sit through losses being unfolded.

We can see plenty. The problem is timely action. Any tool that you used that solves this?

Revenue Leakage Assessment Checklist for your dealership

Most dealerships focus on increasing sales.
But the biggest profit opportunity often lies in stopping revenue leakages that already exist.

Every day, spare parts stores lose revenue due to:

✅ Inventory inaccuracies
✅ Dead & slow-moving stock
✅ Frequent stock-outs
✅ Incorrect pricing & billing errors
✅ Uncontrolled discounts
✅ Damaged & obsolete inventory
✅ Poor stock rotation
✅ Vendor dependency
✅ Lost quotation follow-ups
✅ Weak inventory controls

These issues silently impact profitability, working capital, customer satisfaction, and inventory health.
Small leakages today become major financial losses tomorrow.
We've helped automobile dealerships across India identify hidden inventory losses through:

✔ Physical Inventory Audits
✔ Inventory Accuracy Improvement
✔ Stock Reconciliation
✔ Slow & Non-Moving Stock Analysis
✔ Process & Control Audits
✔ Inventory Valuation Reviews
✔ Asset Tagging & Verification

💡 Remember:

"Great dealerships don't become profitable only by selling more parts—they become profitable by losing less revenue from every transaction."

👉 What do you think is the biggest revenue leakage in a dealership parts department?
Share your thoughts in the comments.

I have a background in bookkeeping and data entry, mostly within service-oriented businesses. I'm now looking to shift toward warehouse and inventory-related roles, and I want to make sure my skills are sharp enough to compete.

Specifically, I want to improve in these areas:

Excel for bookkeeping and data entry (formulas, data validation, pivot tables, etc.)

Invoice processing and tracking

Warehouse inventory monitoring and management

My main challenge is that I don't have hands-on experience in a warehouse or inventory environment. I can handle the numbers side, but I need practical knowledge of how inventory systems actually work day-to-day — stock monitoring, receiving, dispatching, reconciliation, etc.

If anyone has experience in this field and can point me toward useful resources, templates, or workflows, I'd really appreciate it. Even better if someone is willing to guide or mentor. I want real, applicable knowledge so I can confidently apply for roles in this space.

Any advice, YouTube channels, courses, or communities worth checking out?

Hello, i am looking for a way to manage inventory for a concession stand. We are purely cash only, so there is no need for it to link to a payment method. My dream system would allow us to add bulk units and deduct as we sell. So, like, add 40 bags of doritoes

40 bags of doritos nachos. 30 bags of m&m, 30 kitkat bars, 30 snickers, 20 bottles of coke, 30 diet coke, 30 sprite, etc. Then we can just click a button to say we are selling 1 Coke and 1 kitkat bar. Then, the system would deduct 1 from the inventory of each item. Then say in 2 weeks, I could look and see how many snickers we should have and how many sprite, which I can then use to determine when we need to restock.

Would be even better if we could program how much each costs. Then we could click the buttons, and it would say a $1.50 snickers and a $2 bottle of coke and 1.50 kitkat bar is $5.

We can't afford to pay a subscription for this system because it would eat into the money we are trying to raise. So something free or very cheap flat cost would be great.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

Hey all,

TLDR: what tools/software/AI do people use to reconcile inventory between their ERP and 3PLs at the sku & batch level?

For you readers:

I work for a medium sized food manufacturer.
We exclusively use 3rd party warehouses with different ERPs and attempt to have our ERP (SAP) match every month.
We manage inventory at the SKU and batch code (expiration date) level. I.e. sku 1 that expires 1/1 and sku 1 that expires on 1/2 are different line items when I reconcile.

Currently we pull in the monthly inventory snapshots from the different providers in different formats, make them uniform, and compare them to what our ERP reports for the same day.

We compare the differences entirely in excel and identify any discrepancies. We tag every single discrepancy as timing (no action needed) or adjustment (meaning we have to make an adjustment within our ERP to match our provider’s correct inventory) I.e. unreported damages, lost, found, or batch swaps that the warehouse(s) made during the month.

This process takes about 20-30 man hours per month to get through.
The job is too cumbersome for AI at the moment because of the different data sources and there are too many nuances.

How on earth do other companies do this quickly and accurately? What tools could you suggest?

Hello! I am a sales manager and we are changing up our inventory. We are moving to a 1000sq ft storage facility from our instore stock room. We have 9 vehicles with active stock.
I’d like something simple that runs on a tablet at the storage facility that techs sign into and remove inventory from while taking things.
I’d like to be able to quickly see all active stock
Ideally I do not want bar code system, just an app system.

Let me know if you guys have any ideas or recommendations!

I am looking for a system that will allow for individual order inventory tracking. Logging the lots numbers, number of items, or pictures of the inventory being sent out per order.

Some context- I run a chemical warehouse and send pallets of product out 25-30 times a week. We have an ongoing problem with customers coming back and stating that they were missing product when I know they're not. Currently we track inventory via Google Sheets and I go in manually to update each individual order for the number of each product and the coordinating lot numbers. As well, I have a separate phone that contains all the pictures of each customer order with lot numbers and product amount.

I am trying to find a solution that would allow for either barcode scanning or a mobile app that I can scan each product and have one place that I can track inventory and export a report per order if I need to verify an order for a customer.

Talking to a few small business owners lately — retailers, wholesalers, distributors — and I keep hearing variations of the same headache.

Inventory on a spreadsheet. GST filed manually (or scrambled at the last minute). Vendors sending invoices over WhatsApp. POS at the shop has no idea what's in stock at the warehouse. ITC claims missed because nobody caught the GSTR-2B mismatch in time.

And the worst part — they're juggling 4-5 different tools (Tally for accounts, some random POS, Excel for procurement, WhatsApp for vendors) that don't talk to each other.

So I'm genuinely asking — is this actually a widespread problem or am I just talking to the wrong people?

If you run or manage a small/mid-sized business:

• How do you currently handle inventory across channels?
• How painful is GST reconciliation for you month to month?
• Have you tried any software for this? What worked, what didn't?

Not selling anything. Just trying to understand if this is a real, common problem — or if most businesses have already figured it out and I'm overthinking it.

I’ve been using Shopify for years, but I still find the need for individual SKUs quite frustrating.

Most suppliers/vendors we buy from give one SKU for multiple variants. For example, a T-shirt might have the same vendor SKU for XS, S, M, L and XL. Often the same SKU is also used across different colours.

However, Shopify — and now Prediko — seem to require a unique SKU for every single variant. I understand why this might be useful internally, but in practice it creates a difficult process for us.

If we manually create unique SKUs for every size and colour, it becomes very time-consuming and error-prone. Even if we use an automatic SKU generator, it creates another problem: the SKU used in Shopify/Prediko may not be recognised by the vendor. So if Prediko creates a purchase order using our internal SKU, how is the vendor supposed to know what item we are ordering?

There is also a POS issue. Some vendors don’t provide barcodes, so in-store we often search by the vendor SKU. If the vendor SKU is something like “123”, but our Shopify SKU is something like “16597”, staff won’t find the item easily in Shopify POS.

How are other multi-brand retailers handling this?

Do you keep the vendor SKU somewhere else, such as barcode, metafield, product title, variant title, or supplier code? Is there a clean way to have both an internal Shopify SKU and the original vendor SKU searchable and usable for purchase orders?

Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but this feels like a very clear problem for retailers buying from lots of different vendors.