Choosing an inventory app for a small business
What to look for, what to ignore, and when to stay in your spreadsheet
A small business needs a stock app that one person can set up in an afternoon, that runs on the phones the team already has, and that records where things are rather than only how many. Anything requiring a server, a consultant or a training day is aimed at a larger company.
When does a small business need an inventory app?
The moment worth watching for is not a product count, it is a handover. As long as one person puts everything away and takes everything out, that person is the system, and a spreadsheet is a fine record of it. The day a colleague, a temp or a driver also touches the stock, the knowledge stops being in one head and nothing is recording it. That is when things start being looked for. If you are already searching for items you know you bought, you passed the point some time ago.
Five things worth checking
Most stock apps look the same on a feature list. These five are where they actually differ for a small company.
- Setup you can finish yourself — If the first step is a call with a sales engineer, the product is priced and built for a company with a project budget. You should be able to sign up, create a few locations and register your first goods without speaking to anyone.
- Runs on the devices you own — Buying scanning hardware before knowing whether the software fits is the most common way to waste money on this. A phone camera scans well enough to find out, and dedicated scanners can come later if the volume justifies them.
- Storage locations, not just quantities — An app that only counts is a spreadsheet with a login. The value starts when it can say where something is, because that is the question that costs you time on the floor.
- A history you can look back through — When a figure turns out to be wrong, the useful question is what happened, not what is the number now. Check that every movement is stored with who, when and where, and that you can read it back.
- Pricing that does not punish growth — Watch for limits on transactions or products that turn a cheap plan into an expensive one once it is embedded. Per-device pricing with unlimited transactions is easier to predict than per-transaction pricing.
What should an inventory app cost?
For a small business, stock software is a tens-of-euros-per-month decision, not a thousands-per-year one. If a quote runs into implementation fees, licence tiers and a minimum term, you are being sold a system for a company several sizes larger. The useful test is whether you can stop paying next month without losing anything but the subscription.
When should you not buy one?
If your stock is a handful of items in one cupboard, if nothing is worth much, or if you would be the only one ever opening the app, a spreadsheet is genuinely the better tool and costs nothing. Software helps when several people need the same answer at the same time. Buying it before that point mostly adds a login to a problem you did not have.
How this app scores on those five
Inventory Management is built for exactly this size of company. You sign up yourself, it runs on the phones you already carry, everything is recorded against a storage location, every movement keeps its own history, and you pay per device with unlimited transactions. The first month is free and there is nothing to install.
The facts, in short
- Runs on Android phones and tablets, on Android barcode scanners, in a desktop browser, and on iPhone and iPad as a web app.
- The app and this website are available in four languages: English, Dutch, German and Spanish.
- Every stock movement is stored with five details: the product, the storage location, the quantity, the moment and the device that registered it.
- The Premium plan contains 17 built-in analyses, from stock value and location fill rate to dormant stock and busiest hours.
- Basic costs 12,50 euro per device per month or 134,99 euro per year. Premium costs 25,00 euro per month or 274,99 euro per year.
- Every plan starts with one free month. No credit card is needed to start.
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Frequently asked questions
How many products before a spreadsheet stops working?
There is no useful number. Companies run thousands of items in a spreadsheet successfully with one person, and fail with two hundred once three people touch them. Count the hands, not the rows.
Do I need barcode scanners to start?
No. The camera on an ordinary phone reads the barcodes printed on packaging, which is what most small warehouses scan. Dedicated scanners are faster and survive being dropped, so they make sense once scanning is all day, every day.
Can I keep using my accounting software as well?
Yes, and most companies do. The stock app records where things are and what moved; the accounting package keeps the money side. They answer different questions and do not have to be connected to both be useful.
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