Guides

Inventory best practice guides

Seven guides for whoever owns the stockroom, in three tracks: stop running out, count and measure what you have, and get set up as you grow. They are about inventory practice rather than software walkthroughs — where Stockout does part of the job for you we say so and link to it, and where it does not do the job at all, we say that too.

Prevention

How to prevent stockouts: practices that actually work

What a stockout actually costs you, why stockouts happen, and seven practices that fix it — ranking items by usage value, setting a real trigger, measuring lead time instead of quoting it — plus a week-by-week 30-day rollout.

17 min read Read guide →

Formulas

Reorder point and safety stock: the formulas, with worked numbers

The reorder point formula, three ways to size safety stock, and every number worked through step by step — plus the six mistakes that quietly break the math.

17 min read Read guide →

Counting

Cycle counting vs. a physical inventory count

Downtime, staffing and error rate side by side; how often to count A, B and C items and how many counts a day that works out to; the tolerance band that separates a match from a variance; and what to do when the shelf and the record disagree.

18 min read Read guide →

Measurement

Inventory KPIs: the metrics worth tracking

Turnover, weeks of cover, stockout rate, count accuracy, carrying cost, dead stock and shrink — the formula for each, the data it needs, the trap that makes it lie, and where the app's own charts stop and your spreadsheet starts.

26 min read Read guide →

Migration

Moving inventory off a spreadsheet without losing a week

There is no import button, so the sheet has to earn its rows: dedupe and agree one name format, settle the sites first, enter by what an item costs you when it runs out, build the long tail from scans, and verify with a count.

24 min read Read guide →

Labeling

Barcode vs. QR vs. RFID: choosing inventory labels

What each code is actually good at, what belongs on a label, thermal material and placement that survive a stockroom, the arithmetic that decides whether RFID pays — and exactly which of them scans on which device.

22 min read Read guide →

Multi-site

Multi-location inventory: running stock across sites

Naming that sorts, one named owner per site, how to record a move as two adjustments when no transfer exists, what goes quiet in an aggregate view, and the test for whether a second location is worth its bookkeeping.

19 min read Read guide →

Where to start

Three tracks. Stop running out: the prevention guide sets your priorities and the reorder guide gives you a number for each item. Count and measure: the counting guide keeps that number true, and the KPI guide says which figures are worth a monthly look. Set up and scale: getting off a spreadsheet, deciding what to print on a label and when a scan is worth it, and running more than one site without the records drifting apart. Each guide stands on its own, and each ends with a checklist or worksheet you can work through in one sitting.

Pick the 20–40 items that cost you money or a callback when they hit zero. Rank by annual usage value — units used per year × unit cost — and start at the top. Those are the only items worth a calculated trigger in week one.
Work out one trigger quantity per item before you touch any setting: average daily usage × lead time in days, plus a buffer sized for the longest lead time you have actually seen. A trigger you cannot explain in one sentence will get overridden.
Name one person, a fixed day and a tolerance. Count the top-ranked items monthly, the middle tier quarterly and the long tail once or twice a year, and correct the record the same day you count — a variance you look at a week later is untraceable.
Settle your sites before you enter a single item. Every item, kit, checklist, folder and work order belongs to exactly one location, the same product at two sites is two separate records, and there is no transfer between them — it is the one decision that is genuinely expensive to reverse.