A free inventory spreadsheet that tells you when to stop using it.
We sell warehouse software, so a spreadsheet template from us should look like a trap. Here is the version that is not one: it works, it is free, and the file itself has a section explaining the point at which it stops working and why.
- Locations. One row per physical place a thing can sit, with a naming scheme for anyone who has not labelled the rack yet. Receiving floor included, because stock on the floor is still stock.
- Items. One row per SKU, with a home location and a reorder point.
- Movements. The ledger. Every receipt, pick, move and correction, with who did it and why.
- Stock on hand. Calculated from the movements, never typed. This is the part most templates get wrong.
Never overwrite a quantity. Add a movement instead, even when you are correcting your own mistake, and write the reason next to it.
A spreadsheet where numbers get typed over can tell you that it is wrong. It can never tell you why, and the why is the only part that stops it happening again next month. This is also the single biggest difference between a spreadsheet that survives two years and one that gets quietly abandoned.
One trap worth naming, because our own first draft of this file got it wrong: moving stock from receiving to a shelf is two rows, minus from where it left and plus to where it went. Written as a single positive row it doubles the total for that SKU, and the file said 88 units where the warehouse had 40.
Roughly 300 SKUs and one person recording movements. Under that, a spreadsheet kept this way beats most of what you could buy, and we say the same thing on our own pricing page. Past it, this is the order things break, and you will recognise the first one before the others:
- Two people record a movement at once and one overwrites the other.
- A second copy appears on somebody’s phone.
- Nobody trusts the location column, so people walk the rack to check.
- A count takes longer than a day, and gets postponed. Then postponed again.
None of those are spreadsheet failures exactly. They are the reasons software exists, and until you hit them you do not need any.
The reason people stay on a spreadsheet years past the point it works is not price. It is that nobody wants to retype 800 SKUs into something new.
So send us the file and we will do it. Email your spreadsheet to [email protected] and we will load your items and locations into an account and send it back set up. No charge, no call, no demo. It does not have to be our template: send whatever you actually use, however messy.
A person reads it and does the work, so it takes a day or so rather than a minute, and we will tell you what looks wrong in the file. Being straight about the limit: loaded data is exactly as right as the spreadsheet was. It saves you the typing, not the counting, and walking the racks once is still the only thing that makes the numbers true. If you then decide not to use us, you keep the account and the loaded data for the rest of the 21 days regardless.
Curious what the spreadsheet is costing you before you decide anything? There is a calculator that uses your numbers, and it will tell you when the answer is “not much”. We also read 1,019 warehouse websites and found that about half of them show no sign of any software at all, so if you are on a spreadsheet you are the median, not the straggler.