Inventory spreadsheet alternative
Most inventory is tracked in a spreadsheet, and for small collections that is the correct choice: free, flexible, and something you already know. A spreadsheet stops being the right tool at a fairly specific point, when you need photos, when the person looking is standing in a garage holding a phone, and when locations stop being a single text field.
What spreadsheets are genuinely good at
It is worth being clear, because plenty of software marketing pretends otherwise. For up to a hundred or so items in one place, a spreadsheet beats most inventory apps. It costs nothing, has no learning curve, sorts and filters well, does arithmetic that inventory apps often cannot, and your data is completely portable.
If that describes your situation, the honest advice is to keep the spreadsheet.
What breaks first
The failures arrive in a predictable order as an inventory grows.
- Photos. Images in cells are awkward, bloat the file and are unusable on a phone. This is usually the first real wall.
- Phone use. Editing a wide sheet on a phone, in a garage, one-handed, is unpleasant enough that updates stop happening.
- Locations. "Garage shelf 2" as free text drifts into "Garage, shelf 2" and "garage sh2", and now filtering is unreliable.
- Search. Finding "charger" requires you to have named it consistently, and a spreadsheet does nothing to help you.
- Multiple people. Two colleagues, two edits, one overwritten row, or a file that lives in one person's Drive.
- Staleness. Every one of the above makes updating slower, and slow updating is what silently kills an inventory.
How to decide
There is no threshold that fits everyone, but two questions settle it quickly. Do you need to see a photo of the thing to identify it? Is the person who needs the answer usually standing in front of the storage rather than at a desk?
Two noes mean stay on the spreadsheet. Two yeses mean a spreadsheet is costing you more time than it saves. One of each usually means you are close, and the deciding factor is whether the sheet is still being updated honestly.
Moving without losing anything
The reasonable fear about leaving a spreadsheet is trading a file you own for an account you rent. Two things make that safe. Check that the tool exports to CSV before you commit anything to it, and keep the original sheet until the new system has survived a few real searches.
Locately includes CSV and PDF export in its paid tier for exactly this reason. It is pre-launch, so it is not something you can migrate to today. If your spreadsheet is currently working, it should stay your inventory until there is something to move to.
Common questions
At what point should I stop using a spreadsheet for inventory?
Can I import my existing spreadsheet?
Is inventory software worth paying for at home?
What can a spreadsheet do that inventory apps cannot?
Pay once. Keep Plus forever.
Locately is pre-launch. The first 100 people pay $99 once and never pay again, refundable in full until the beta opens.
Related
A home inventory app records what is in every box, bin and closet so you can search for an item and get its exact location. How it works and what to look for.
Your Etsy shop counts listings, not the materials, packaging and tools behind them, and never says where anything is. What a seller inventory app needs to cover.
Bays, aisles, racks and pallets in one nested map, on a phone. What a small warehouse needs from inventory software, and when a full WMS is overkill.