Your books know the value. They do not know the shelf.
Accounting software is the right home for your books and the wrong home for your stock. Stocked is not a replacement for it. It is what feeds it.
You will recognise at least two of these
None of them mean you chose badly. They mean the business got bigger than the tool.
Stock is a number typed in at month end
One figure, entered once, correct for about a day. Between closes, the ledger and the storeroom are two different businesses.
There is no reorder point, because there is no rate
Books record what left. They do not model how fast it leaves, so nothing can tell you that you have eleven days of a line left.
Locations are a memo field
Two shops and a store room net off into one balance. Which site is holding the dead stock is a question the trial balance cannot answer.
Your accountant's inventory is a valuation
It is the right number for tax and the wrong number for buying. Nobody restocks from a closing balance.
What actually changes
The left column is not a straw man. It is what the tool is for. The right is what a system built around stock does instead.
| Side by side | an accounts package | Stocked |
|---|---|---|
| What inventory means | A balance on a date | A live count per item, per location, with what is reserved and what is free |
| Purchasing | A bill, after the goods arrive | PO, receipt, part-delivery and landed cost, with the bill last |
| Selling | An invoice, keyed in | Tills, invoices, online and phone orders, all drawing on one stock figure |
| Stock counts | A journal entry | Count sheets, variance per line, and an adjustment that explains itself |
| VAT | Handled properly | Also handled, at the rate of the country the sale happened in |
| Where the two meet | — | Sync sales, purchases and stock value to QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho or Sage |
In fairness
Do not leave your accountant
Ledgers, payroll, tax filing and year end belong in an accounts package, and yours is probably fine. This is not a migration away from it. It is putting an operational layer in front of it, so the numbers arriving in your books are the ones the shelves actually produced. If your accountant asks what changed, the answer is that stock stopped being a monthly estimate.
How the move actually goes
There is no cutover weekend, because there is nothing to cut over. You run both for a week, and then you stop typing into the old one.
Export what you have
Items, prices, suppliers and current counts, as CSV. Every system on this list can produce one, and if yours cannot, a photo of the notebook page has been enough before.
20 minutes
We map your columns
Send the files and we return a loaded workspace: your names, your SKUs, your suppliers, your locations. There is no charge for this on any plan, including the free one.
One working day
Count once, on a quiet morning
Opening counts are the only part nobody can do for you. Print the count sheets, walk the shelves, key in the variances. It is the last time your figures will be a guess.
A morning
Run both for a week
Keep the old system open and updated. Nothing here writes to it, so the week costs you double entry and nothing else, and it ends with two sets of numbers you can hold against each other.
A week
Stop updating the old one
That is the cutover. There is no switch to throw and no downtime, because the day you stop typing into the old thing is the day you have moved.
A decision, not an event
Questions we get from people on an accounts package
Will I be keying everything twice?
No. Sales, purchases and stock movements sync to your accounts package on a schedule, posted to the accounts you map once at setup. See the integrations page for what connects today.
Which is the source of truth for stock value?
Stocked, because it is the one watching movements as they happen. Your books receive the valuation rather than compute it, which is also why the two finally agree at year end.
Does this handle VAT?
Yes, and at the rate of where the sale happened rather than where you signed up: 7.5% in Nigeria, a different rate in Ghana or Kenya, zero on the lines that are zero-rated. Invoices carry the breakdown your filing needs.