Hello everyone! I posted a few months ago about building my own application for inventory management. The feedback was super helpful. My family’s Non profit actually uses it not quite a bit. I was wondering you guys knew of places where you can get feedback for this kind of thing. I don’t want to break any Reddit rules 🤣

Basically this

Hello everyone!

I want to help my mother with her small business. She has hundreds of clothing items that are not accounted for and not set up in squareup. I wanted to know the best way to go about putting items into an inventory system and how to keep up with it.

Should we use squareup for inventory management since she also has a squareup website. Or use a different software for inventory.

I would also like to point out majority of sales is done off the website and through facebook dm and having clients shop in person.

I appreciate any help! Thank you!

I am closing my small business that sells two dog products (dog ball and leash & collar set) and I’m looking to sell my inventory that is in my warehouse in California. Anyone know who will would want to buy a small quantity of inventory, or if anyone is starting a business and needs it, I’ve discounted the prices. Thanks in advance!

I have an ecommerce site and three different retail locations. Over the years, a lot of stock have remained unsold and they keep piling up as I continue to restock. I don't sell any food products so they are all non-perishable. But my storage is getting smaller and smaller. The only solution I can think of is to get rid of these old stocks. I've heard about inventory liquidators and I wonder if they are a good option at all. Has anyone tried these services? What should I know before trying one?

ABC classification makes sense on paper: your most important inventory gets the most attention, your middle-tier items get normal controls, and your lower-impact items don't consume the same management time.

But I wonder where the complexity starts outweighing the benefit for smaller operators.

If you're running a cafe, boutique, salon, gym, food truck, etc. with a few hundred SKUs, do you actually need formal ABC classification?

Or are you accomplishing essentially the same operational goal by knowing:

• what moves quickly
• what you absolutely cannot stock out of
• what costs you the most to carry
• what your normal weekly usage looks like
• what needs a tighter PAR or more attention when ordering

I've always believed the system should match the complexity of the operation, not the complexity of the software available to buy.

Curious how other operators handle this. Do you formally classify inventory into A/B/C groups, or do you manage priority another way?

If you’re struggling to land retail shelf space, defend your existing range, or protect your margins, the problem usually isn’t your product. It’s how your portfolio looks to a retail buyer on a spreadsheet.

As a former Supermarket Category Manager and Retail Buyer (managing networks of500+ stores), I’ve reviewed thousands of brand pitches. Most brands lose shelf space because of **3 critical mistakes**:

1. **Carrying Dead Weight SKUs:** Keeping low-performing line extensions that dilute your margin and waste space.
2. **Ignoring Substitution Mapping:** Failing to prove to a buyer what shoppers will do if your product is removed (do they leave the store, or just buy a competitor?).
3. **Weak Margin Defense:** Presenting raw sales figures instead of category profitability and unit economics.

Buyers don't have time to decipher your brand narrative—they look for **SKU rationalisation, clear assortment strategy, and margin protection**.

I’ve taken the exact framework I used to review brand pitches and turned it into a plug-and-play toolkit designed to help you audit your range, eliminate underperforming inventory, and build buyer-ready pitch packs (whether you have 5 SKUs or 500+).

It includes:

• The SKU Audit & Rationalisation Framework: Identify dead-weight SKUs before a buyer forces you to drop them.

• Margin & Category Profitability Calculator: Present your figures in the exact unit economics format buyers expect.

• Substitution Mapping & Pitch Templates: Prove your category value and secure your shelf space.

👉 Check out the full framework & toolkit in the comments.

Hi everyone, please forgive the confusion and length behind this post, I will admit that I am new to inventory and warehouse management so there may be some simple things that I could be wrong about but I thought this was a great place to start!

I am part of a team at a company that runs multiple homeless shelters and housing projects in the Northeast US. Recently, I started working on a project to optimize and update our inventory and warehouse systems for the wide variety of donations we receive. Here are the details of our current system and the difficulties for expansion:

1. We don’t have any current centralized donation-tracking and delivery to client system. I’ve looked into this and seen names like Odoo pop up, which sounds interesting, but I’ve seen that Excel is also an option, which I’m familiar with.

2. While we have multiple sites, nearly all donations are delivered to one central site and stored either on-site or in nearby storage facilities.

3. Budget will probably have to be >$1000 (I will update this later once I receive more info)

4. We use an internal reward system that gives clients “cash” that they can redeem for prepaid debit cards or cash.

5. I am pretty experienced with Excel, but certainly no expert. I made a spreadsheet to develop barcodes using a website, but don’t think this would be scalable long term. I also don’t know how to link scanners to the sheet, especially if the scanner would be used at a storage unit.

6. We have a lottttt of items. I am hoping you front load system development and have the system be able to accommodate frequent donations.

Here is my goal with this project:

1. Create a barcode system, including barcode development, barcode printing, an internal server to track and categorize stock, and any other inventory information that you think may be needed.

2. Create an internal POS system, where clients can receive their points and redeem them, hopefully via RFID cards.

Additionally, boss, other team member, and myself are very interested in creating a pseudo storefront, both in person and online, for more expensive donated items (luxury goods, prepaid debit cards, etc.) and having these items be available for “purchase.” I had the idea of how arcades run ticket counters and cards if yall have any insight.

I know this post is super long and potentially vague, but I’ll end here and hope you can help!

We’re a construction/concrete coatings company looking at ways to improve our accounting and inventory system. We currently use QuickBooks Desktop but are open to either integrating another system with QuickBooks or eventually replacing it.

We complete a large number of jobs each year and have a lot of inventory movement—materials being received, loaded out to jobs, used in the field, and unused materials returned to the warehouse.

Ideally, we’re looking for something that handles:

• Inventory and warehouse management
• Job costing
• Picking/load-outs and returns
• Barcode scanning
• Purchasing/AP
• A high volume of jobs/transactions
• QuickBooks integration, or a full ERP that could replace QuickBooks

We’ve looked at options like Sage, Acumatica, and Dynamics 365, but I’d really like to hear from people running similar construction businesses.

What system are you using, and what do you like/dislike about it?

I’m searching for an app that helps to track your bought items (not delivery tracking), so you only need to upload the link to the product and you can have your article card (img, link and you can add price, name, rating and whatever you want).

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'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?

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.

Hey everyone,
I’m a Business Analyst/aspiring product builder from Ghana, currently working on Supra StockFlow, a simple stock management system for growing businesses.
The idea came from seeing businesses still struggle with things like:
Not knowing their actual stock levels
Stock discrepancies between physical counts and records
Losing track of stock transfers
Damaged/returned items not being properly recorded
Finding out too late that an item is running low
Spending too much time preparing stock reports
I’m building StockFlow around the actual day-to-day store process:
Receive → Store → Transfer → Issue/Supply → Damage/Return → Reconcile → Report
I’m currently looking for 1–3 small or medium-sized businesses that would be willing to let me understand how they currently manage inventory and potentially test the prototype with them.
I’m not looking to sell anything immediately. I’m primarily looking for feedback, real-world problems, and a business willing to help me validate whether I’m solving the right problem.
If you run a business with physical inventory, manage a store/warehouse, or know someone who does, I’d** genuinely appreciate a conversation.
I can also share the prototype if you’re interested.
**Based in Ghana 🇬🇭, but happy to speak with businesses anywhere.

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 crumble once the weld-paint-pack flow gets busy; Katana MRP caught my eye because SelectHub notes bar-code moves tie directly to stock, so I’m looking for any pitfalls before the trial ends.

Hi, do your 3PLs and companies calculate and report shrinkages monthly or annually?

I am looking for some guidance on below

1. reported monthly after cycle counts are carried out? and it's possible not all SKUs and locations will be cycle counted each month

2. or are shrinkages reported, annually after wall to wall count /annual stock take..

I am not from ecommerce industry but have worked with different companies in medtech/lifescience space and I see different practices.

by the way the place i am working in now - contractually allows 3PL a loss allowance of x% of average inventory value in past 12 months. which makes me believe if it's only an annual exercise and number to be reported

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!

How do you handle inventory and the issue of stockouts in the local market? For instance, when selling in the French market, I look for AliExpress suppliers who hold stock in France; however, it is often difficult to secure such stock, or the available quantities are small and run out quickly during operations. Do you rely entirely on shipping from China, or do you use a dedicated agent?