Moving your stock records from Excel to a proper system: where to start
Stock levels, goods in and out, and branches: the steps that make the switch painless.
In a business that keeps its stock records in Excel, one scene plays out again and again. A customer asks, the salesperson checks the file and says “we have it”, someone goes to the stockroom — and it’s not there. Or the other way around: the file says there’s none, but a box is sitting at the back of the shelf. The numbers and reality have drifted far apart.
Why stock is hard to keep in Excel
Excel itself doesn’t make mistakes — people do. One person records what comes in, another records what goes out, and returns get recorded by nobody. One of the formulas gets deleted by accident, and you find out a month later. When a second branch opens, a second file appears, and the two never match.
Steps for making the switch
Setting up a stock system starts with getting things in order, not with the software. Here’s the order I usually recommend:
- Clean up your product list. The same product gets written down under three different names: “Coca-Cola 1L”, “Coke 1 liter”, “cola 1l”. Each product gets one name and one code (SKU). The most boring step, but also the most important one.
- Agree on units of measure. Pieces, boxes, kilograms — which one you receive goods in and which one you sell in. How many pieces are in a box goes into the system.
- Do a stocktake. You take your opening stock from the shelves, not from Excel — set aside a day and count everything.
- Run both side by side. For a week or two, the old way and the new system run together. If the numbers differ, you track down why.
- Retire the old way. After that, Excel is just an archive.
The most common mistakes
- Copying the opening stock from the old file. Then the old mistakes move into the new system too.
- Not training your staff. If the storekeeper says “I’ll enter it later”, the system starts lying in the very first week.
- Trying to automate everything from day one: serial numbers, expiry dates, multiple currencies.
- Not thinking through a separate process for returned and damaged goods.
A system won’t put your warehouse in order. It keeps the order you’ve set up.