You are paying for a factory you do not run
An ERP is the right answer to a question most retailers, bars and wholesalers never asked. If the implementation is longer than your busiest season, that is the wrong shape of tool.
You will recognise at least two of these
None of them mean you chose badly. They mean the business got bigger than the tool.
The project has a phase two
It has had one for a while. Meanwhile the shop is being run out of a spreadsheet beside the system that was supposed to replace it.
Selling one bottle takes forty fields
Most of them exist for manufacturing, warehousing or a compliance regime you are not in. Staff route around them, and the data quality goes with it.
Nothing changes without a consultant
A new location, a new price list, a new user: all of it is a ticket, a rate card and a week.
You are billed per module for modules you do not open
MRP, quality control, fixed assets. Line items on a renewal, each with a champion who left.
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 ERP | Stocked |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first real use | Months, with a partner | An afternoon, with your own CSVs |
| Changing something | A consultant and a change request | A setting, changed by whoever owns the shop |
| What is included | Modules, licensed separately | One product: stock, purchasing, selling, services, reporting |
| Manufacturing & MRP | Genuinely strong, if you need it | Not built for it: recipes and assemblies only |
| Multi-entity consolidation | Yes, that is the point of it | Multi-location, one entity |
| What it costs to leave | Ask the partner | Export everything as CSV, whenever you like |
In fairness
Sometimes the ERP is right
If you manufacture, run material requirements planning, consolidate several legal entities, or answer to an audit regime that expects a named enterprise system, an ERP earns its cost and Stocked will not replace it. We would rather say that now than in month four of a migration. Where we tend to win is the business that bought an ERP for inventory and got a decade of software with it.
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 ERP
We have a lot of history in there. Can it come across?
Items, suppliers, customers, price lists and current stock, yes. Those come across from CSV. Years of posted transactions generally should not: leave them in the system of record you are winding down, and start clean on the operational side.
What about the things we genuinely used it for?
Tell us which ones. If it is purchasing, receiving, landed cost, multi-location stock, transfers, roles or reporting, it is here. If it is MRP, fixed assets or consolidation, it is not, and we will say so before you commit.
Can we run both while we decide?
Yes, and we recommend it. Run a location or a category on Stocked for a month with the old system still live. Nothing here writes to it, so there is nothing to undo.