As a business grows, so does its need to manage various functional areas. The tools and services that you use when you first start your company will change over time. One of those functional areas that inFlow software can help with, of course, revolves around inventory. As a guest blogger here, I recognize that, for some people, switching to a full-fledged and powerful inventory system like inFlow — while at the same time starting up or expanding — can be daunting. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So I went out and found some inventory spreadsheet solutions to serve as an interim solution (the keyword being interim, or short-term). Most of these are free or low-cost and can help you manage inventory, but they will be limited as you try to grow your business. Eventually, you will hit a wall with what a spreadsheet can do. That has been my personal experience, too, in running a small business with basic tools. You can manage with spreadsheets for a period of time, but you will find as I did that you will end up spending too much time hacking together a solution to save some money. And you’ll spend at least a day trying to make a spreadsheet formula work. Let’s look at the pros and cons of simple spreadsheet software first. The pro’s of using inventory templates to track inventory You probably already know how to use it, at least the basic functions. There’s not much of a learning curve. Inventory spreadsheet templates are also already built into Microsoft Office, which most businesses already own. That makes it a low cost, easy alternative to learning an inventory program. There are also several different options available (more on the spreadsheet options later). Pros of inventory spreadsheets at a glance: • No learning curve (at least for the basics) • You may already have Microsoft Excel installed • Many options are available and it’s relatively easy to customize The con’s of using an inventory template to track inventory While using spreadsheets, your inventory is not automatically updated every time you buy or sell an item. You have that added step of manually updating the sheet each time. Additionally, there is no way to automatically reorder stock, and there is no concrete way to know when stock needs to be reordered unless the spreadsheet is kept constantly and fully up to date. In other words, the administration of inventory has to be done in your head when using an inventory template or Excel. Of course this can be time consuming and stressful, with the added probability of more errors. There’s also no easy way to share data from Excel with other members of the team. The creator of the sheet becomes to go to person when anything needs updates.
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March 2018
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