The sheet was right until two people opened it
A spreadsheet models a business beautifully and records one terribly. Keep it for the thinking; move the counting somewhere that can be wrong out loud.
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 file has a date in its name
stock-master-final-v3-JULY.xlsx. Every copy is somebody's version of the truth, and the one on your laptop is not the one the storekeeper is editing.
Nobody knows what is on the shelf until somebody counts
The sheet holds what you meant to have. Between counts it drifts, and the gap only shows up when a customer asks for something you have already sold.
Margin is a guess with a decimal point
Cost changes every time the price of diesel does. Without a cost history per receipt, last month's margin is this month's cost applied backwards.
A formula broke in March and nobody noticed
A dragged cell, a row inserted above a SUM. There is no log, so there is no way back to the day it was still right.
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 | a spreadsheet | Stocked |
|---|---|---|
| Who can be in it at once | One editor before the merge conflicts start | Your whole team, each scoped to their location and role |
| When stock changes | When somebody remembers to type it | The moment a sale rings, a delivery is received or a transfer lands |
| Cost of what you sold | One cost column, overwritten | Cost captured per receipt, so old margin stays what it was |
| Who changed this | Version history, if it is a cloud sheet | Audit trail on every movement, price change and login |
| Selling from it | Nothing sells from a spreadsheet | Tills, invoices, online and phone orders draw down the same stock |
| Getting your numbers out | It is already a file | CSV export on every list and report, plus a read-only API |
In fairness
Keep the spreadsheet
Nothing beats a sheet for a one-off question: a rent negotiation, a what-if on next season's buying, a model nobody else will ever open. Every list and report in Stocked exports to CSV precisely so you can carry on doing that. What moves is the record, not the thinking.
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 a spreadsheet
Do I have to rebuild my item list by hand?
No. Export what you have as CSV, send it over, and we map your columns onto ours and load it: items, prices, suppliers and opening counts. If your sheet has a column we do not have a home for, it becomes a custom field rather than a deletion.
What happens to years of history in the old file?
Keep it. Nothing is deleted and nothing is migrated by force. The sheet stays exactly where it is, read-only, for as long as you want it. We import the state of the business, not every transaction since 2019.
My sheet has formulas the business depends on.
Send them with the export and we will tell you honestly which are already a report here and which are not. Anything that is not, you can keep running on exported CSV, and the numbers going into it will simply be current.