Excel is fine, until one of
these six things happens
A spreadsheet is free, instant and understood by everybody in the shop. That is a real advantage and most software pages pretend otherwise. But there are six specific moments where it stops being cheap and starts quietly costing money, and it is worth knowing which one you have reached.
What you get
The six moments
1. Two people update it at once
The moment a second person needs the file, you are managing versions instead of stock. Somebody works from a copy, and the number everyone trusts is now the number nobody can vouch for.
2. You sell in more than one place
A counter and an online store and WhatsApp means three views of one number. The spreadsheet can only ever be one of them, so the other two are wrong between updates, and the last piece gets sold twice.
3. Cost price stops being one number
Once you buy the same item at different rates, average cost in a cell stops matching reality. Your margin looks fine while individual lines lose money, and you cannot see which.
real cost captured at goods receipt4. You cannot answer "what happened here?"
A spreadsheet holds the current state, not the history. When stock is short there is no record of who changed what and when, so shrinkage becomes a number you absorb rather than a question you answer.
5. The person who built it leaves
One person wrote the formulas and everybody else typed into them. When they go, the sheet keeps opening but nobody can say why a cell does what it does, and the first time it breaks it gets rebuilt from memory. That is the most expensive week a spreadsheet ever causes, and it arrives without notice.
6. You open a second shop
Two locations means two files, or one file with two columns somebody has to keep honest. Either way the reorder gets placed for stock you already own in the other branch, and nobody finds out until the delivery arrives.
one stock number across branchesIncluded
- One number every channel reads
- Every movement attributable to a person and a time
- Real cost recorded when goods arrive
- Upload the .xlsx you already have
- Bad rows reported by row number, good rows still land
- Multi-user without version conflicts
- Margins per product, not per guess
Read before you buy
When this is the wrong plan
If you hold a handful of items, sell in one place and are the only person touching the file, stay on Excel. It is free and it works. Come back when the second person or the second channel arrives; that is when this pays for itself.
Read before you decide
Plain answers to the questions people ask us before they buy. No sales pitch.
Pricing
What inventory software really costs in year one
The monthly fee is the number everyone compares. The first-year total is usually two to four times bigger, and almost all of the difference is your own time.
Read the guideOnline store
One shelf, two channels, and the sale you cannot honour
Your shop and your website are selling the same physical unit. Faster syncing narrows the gap where an oversell happens. It does not close it.
Read the guideInventory
When the delivery does not match the order
Short, extra and damaged each need a different answer at the door. Signing for the paperwork instead of the goods is how stock records start lying.
Read the guideQuestions
Asked and answered
Yes. Upload the .xlsx or .xls you already keep the stock in. Only the product name is required, every other column is optional, so a sheet that grew organically still goes in without being tidied first. If you would rather start from our columns, there is a template to download.
They come back to you with the row number and what was wrong with each one, and the rows that were fine are already in. You are not handed an all-or-nothing failure and left to find the bad line yourself, and you can fix those rows and upload again.
With what you hold, not with the formulas. Upload the product list, count the stock once, and start recording movements from today. The old sheet becomes a reference you can throw away rather than a system somebody has to reverse engineer, and nothing about it needs to be understood first.
Not always, and it is worth being honest about that. If you are one person with one location and a short product list, a spreadsheet is genuinely cheaper and faster. The switch pays when a second person needs the same number, when you start selling in a second place, or when cost price starts varying by delivery.
A WhatsApp order page is free and does not expire. A full counter till is Rs 2,499 a month, and complete inventory with purchasing and an online store is Rs 4,999. Weigh that against one oversold order, one refunded customer, or one line of stock you paid for twice.
Most businesses are selling from it the same week. Import the catalogue, count what you actually hold once, and start. You do not have to move history to start using it going forward.
Try it before you pay for it
14 days free, every feature unlocked, no card required. If it does not beat your spreadsheet, keep the spreadsheet.
Would rather talk it through first? Message us on WhatsApp, +92 310 9812646