Yes, and there are four kinds, built for different businesses. Barcode-and-list apps count things you buy and resell. Point-of-sale apps, like the ones that come with Square or Shopify, track the products you sell over the counter. Accounting apps add stock quantities to your books. And production inventory apps track what you make as well as what you buy: ingredients and materials, recipes, batches, lots and dates. Which one you need depends on one question: do you sell things as they arrived, or do you turn them into something else first? Below is how to choose, what a good app does on a phone, and a day of a small maker's stock kept in one.
The short version
- If you resell finished goods, a barcode-and-list app or your point-of-sale's inventory may be enough.
- If you make what you sell, you need an app that understands recipes, batches, units and lots.
- On a phone, look for camera scanning, working without signal, and screens one hand can use.
- Getting your current list in should take an afternoon, from a spreadsheet or even a photo.
- Try it on a real week before you pay: receive, count, make and ship.
- TaroStack is the production kind, and runs on any phone. More below.
The four kinds of inventory app
| Kind | Tracks | Fits | Runs out when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barcode-and-list app | Items, counts, locations, pictures | Resellers, collections, equipment | You make something from other things |
| Point-of-sale inventory | Products sold at the till or online | A shop selling bought-in goods | Ingredients, batches and wholesale orders |
| Accounting inventory | Quantities and cost in the books | Bought-in goods, a bookkeeper's view | Anything on the shop floor: lots, recipes, counts on a phone |
| Production inventory | Materials, recipes, batches, lots, dates, finished goods | Bakeries, roasters, sauce and soap makers, small manufacturers | You only resell, and pay for features you don't use |
None of these is better in general. A vintage clothing reseller would find a production app heavy; a bakery would find a barcode app empty. The mistake is choosing by the app store's star rating instead of by the kind of business the app was built for.
Three questions that choose for you
- Do you make what you sell? If yes, you need recipes, so that making 48 cookies takes the butter, flour and chocolate off stock. That rules out most list apps and most till systems.
- Does anything you hold have a date or a lot number? Food, cosmetics, supplements, candles with a batch number. If yes, the app has to record the supplier's lot and use the oldest first, or a recall becomes a guessing game. What that involves is in what is lot tracking.
- Is your stock in more than one place? A kitchen and a shop, a workshop and a market stall. If yes, the app needs stock per place and a way to move it between them.
Two yeses and you're looking at production inventory, whatever size you are.
What a good inventory app does on a phone
Most stock work happens standing up: at the delivery door, in a cold room, at a market table. So test the phone, not the laptop.
| On the phone | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Scans barcodes with the camera | No typing item names with cold fingers |
| Keeps working with no signal | Walk-ins, basements and market fields have none |
| Converts units | You buy by the case and count by the each |
| Shows what to do, not only numbers | "Reorder flour, 3 days left" beats a list of quantities |
| Lets several people use it | And records who changed what |
The no-signal one catches most apps out. Try it: turn on airplane mode, count three items, turn it off, and see whether the count arrives, once, at the right time.
A day of stock, kept in an app
For a small maker, the app should follow the day, one short job at a time:
| When | The job | What the app should do |
|---|---|---|
| 7:00 | Flour and butter delivered | Scan, type the cases, record the supplier's lot and best-by |
| 9:00 | A batch of cookies made | Take the ingredients off by the recipe, from the oldest lots |
| 11:00 | Wholesale order for a café | Say whether the stock is there while you type it |
| 2:00 | Shelf count in the walk-in | Count with no signal, show what the differences are worth |
| 4:00 | What to order tomorrow | A list, with days left and what would arrive too late |
If any of those needs a spreadsheet beside the app, it's the wrong app, or the wrong kind.
Where this stops working
An app that does half the day turns the other half back into paper. The barcode app counts the cookies, and the recipes stay in a binder. The till knows what sold, and the batch numbers live in a notebook. The accounting app has quantities, and nobody can update them from the walk-in. Each tool is fine; together they're a weekly job of making them agree, and the first time anyone asks which customers got a particular batch, the answer is an afternoon of looking.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack is the production kind of inventory app, built for small businesses that make what they sell, and it runs on the phone you already have. There's no app store download: open it in your phone's browser, add it to the home screen, and it behaves like an app, with your business's own stock on it.
It's built for the day above. Receiving is a scan with the phone's camera or any USB or Bluetooth scanner, and a supplier's GS1 case label fills in the lot and use-by date by itself; you type the cases, TaroStack converts to the unit you count and cook in. Making a batch takes every ingredient off stock by the recipe, through recipes within recipes, from the oldest lot first, and notes which lots went in. Selling tells you while you type the order whether the stock is on the shelf, and picks the oldest lot the customer will accept. Counting works in the walk-in with no signal at all and sends itself later, and you see what each difference is worth before you post it.
Then the part a list app can't do: TaroStack tells you things. A reorder list in days of cover, with a red line where an order placed today would arrive too late. A forecast of what will expire unsold and what it'll cost. Alerts for low stock, expiring lots and orders that haven't shipped, each linking to the screen where you deal with it. And when a supplier recalls an ingredient, one report shows every batch it went into, every customer who got them, and what's still on your own shelves.
More than one place is built in: a kitchen, a shop and a market stall are sites, with transfers between them and stock in transit. People can be limited to the site they work at, and every change is recorded with who made it and why. Getting started takes an afternoon: import your spreadsheet, with every row previewed before it's saved, or take a photo of a handwritten stock list and check what TaroStack reads. If you sell online, it connects to your Shopify store, and to Square.
Stock, counting, lots, expiry and recalls are on every plan, from $49 a month; recipes, batches, planning and up to three sites are on Standard at $99. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.