Coffee roaster inventory software tracks green coffee by lot and weight, moves it to roasted coffee through a roast log that records each batch's loss, then to packaged coffee by bag size, and keeps the bags, valves and labels in the same place, so a bag's cost follows what that roast actually lost. There are three kinds: roast-profiling software with inventory attached (Cropster, Artisan), roastery platforms built around wholesale ordering (RoasterTools), and general inventory for small makers (Stocksmith, TaroStack). Prices below are from September 26, 2026.
The short version
- If you want roast profiles and inventory in one place, look at the profiling tools first. That's their home.
- If most of your volume is wholesale and you want customers ordering online, look at a roastery platform.
- If you roast alongside other products, or packaging and lots are the pain, general maker inventory is cheaper.
- Whatever you pick, cost each bag from its own lot's loss, not a house average. The example below shows why.
- Not ready for software? The coffee roaster inventory spreadsheet does all of this by hand, and it's free.
- If lots, packaging and a cost per bag from each roast's own loss are what hurt, TaroStack does that. More below.
What the software has to track
A roastery's stock lives in three places at once, and the software has to follow it through all three.
- Green coffee, one lot per shipment, in kilograms, because bags range from 60 kg to 70 kg and Hawaiʻi ships in 100 lb bags. Cost per kilogram, including freight.
- The roast log: each batch's green lot, weight in, weight out and loss. That's where green becomes roasted, and where money disappears as moisture.
- Packaged coffee by product and size, and the packaging itself: bags with valves, labels, boxes.
Two more matter once you grow. Blends are a recipe of roasted components, so a blend's cost is the weighted cost of what went in. And if you're certified organic, your inspector's mass balance runs green in against roasted and packaged out, lot by lot.
A worked example: why each lot needs its own loss
This is the two-person roastery from the spreadsheet article: about 240 kg of green a week through a 12 kg drum, 14.8% loss on average. But the lots don't lose the same. The Colombian, taken darker, loses 17.1%; the washed Ethiopian, roasted light, loses 12.5%.
A 12 oz bag holds 340 g of roasted coffee. Say a bag with a valve plus its label costs $0.48.
| 12 oz bag | Green per kg | Loss | Roasted per kg | Coffee in the bag | Bag and label | Cost per bag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colombia, at its own loss | $8.40 | 17.1% | $10.13 | $3.45 | $0.48 | $3.93 |
| Colombia, at the average | $8.40 | 14.8% | $9.86 | $3.35 | $0.48 | $3.83 |
| Ethiopia, at its own loss | $9.20 | 12.5% | $10.51 | $3.58 | $0.48 | $4.06 |
Roasted per kg is the green price divided by what's left after the loss: $8.40 ÷ 0.829 = $10.13. Costing the Colombian at the house average understates it by about 9 cents a bag. On 300 bags a month that's $28 of margin you think you have and don't, and it's the darkest roasts, which lose the most, that you'll underprice.
Software that records each roast's weight in and out, per lot, gets this right without anybody doing the division. The arithmetic on its own is in roast loss and cost per bag, and what to look for in lot tracking generally is in what to look for in a lot tracking app.
The options, and what they cost
From each company's pricing page on September 26, 2026. Cropster quotes in euros; the others in dollars.
| Option | Starts at | Good at | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| A spreadsheet | Free | Everything, by hand | Ours is filled in for a small roastery |
| Artisan | Free | Roast logging and control, with 200+ machines supported | Free for personal and commercial use; its cloud platform, artisan.plus, adds inventory at one fixed price, with a three-month trial |
| Cropster | From €26/month (Starter, machines up to 6 kg) | Roast profiling, with inventory built in | Live green inventory from Core, €95/month; roasted reporting, traceability and production plans from Scale, €275/month; non-coffee inventory on Advanced, €999/month. Plus a volume charge above 250 kg roasted a month |
| RoasterTools | Essentials, $99/month | Wholesale ordering portal, production planning, payments | 1,000 lb a month included, then $0.10 a lb; Organize is $199/month on a one- or two-year term, 5,000 lb |
| Stocksmith (was Craftybase) | Indie, $99/month | Maker inventory with recipes and lots | Has a coffee roaster page; lots are chosen by hand when recording a batch. |
| TaroStack | Starter, $49 a month | Lots, packaging, counts and expiry; roasts and blends on Standard, $99 a month | FIFO cost with freight, true cost per batch |
Three notes on scale, using the example roastery. Its 12 kg drum is past the 6 kg limit on Cropster's Starter, so Cropster starts at Core for it. At about 1,040 kg of green a month it's also well past Cropster's 250 kg threshold, so the volume charge applies on top of the plan price (Cropster). And it roasts about 1,950 lb of finished coffee a month, so on RoasterTools' Essentials plan it would pay overage or look at Organize (RoasterTools). None of that is a criticism: volume pricing is fair. It's worth doing the sum with your own pounds.
My view: if your roast profiles matter most, and they do for a lot of roasters, Cropster or Artisan belong at the center, and inventory can be good enough there. If wholesale ordering is the bottleneck, RoasterTools is built around exactly that. If your trouble is lots, packaging and knowing what a bag really costs, a maker inventory tool is the cheaper place to start.
Where this stops working
Any of these stops working if roasts aren't weighed out. The green-to-roasted step is the one that gets skipped on a busy day, and it's the one every cost and every mass balance depends on. Put the scale next to the cooling tray and the tablet next to the scale.
About us, plainly: TaroStack doesn't do roast profiling and doesn't connect to roasting machines, there's no wholesale ordering portal for your café customers, and there's no live QuickBooks or Xero connection yet. It connects to Shopify and Square only; our Square connection is built and set up, but no customer has connected a till yet. If you need profiles, pair it with Artisan or Cropster, or pick Cropster alone.
How TaroStack does it
The worked example is the case for it: the Colombian costs $3.93 a bag at its own loss, not the $3.83 a house average says, and on 300 bags a month that's $28 of margin that isn't there. Software gets that right only if every roast records its own weight in and out, and that's how TaroStack works. Green comes in as a lot, with the importer's code or yours, and freight spread over what arrived, so a kilogram of green carries its real cost. A roast is a batch: it takes green from the lot you choose (or the one that expires first), you record what came out, and the batch shows its actual cost against the standard. The division from the example happens without anybody doing it.
Blends are recipes made of roasted coffee, so their cost follows the components. Bags, valves and labels are stock like everything else, bought by the case and used by the each, and the reorder list tells you how many days of them you have. Over time TaroStack checks from your own batch history whether a roast yields what its recipe claims, which is where a drifting scale or a wetter lot shows up. Counting works on a phone with no signal, next to the roaster or in the warehouse.
Lots, expiry and recalls are on every plan, from $49 a month. Roasts, blends and true cost are on Standard at $99. The first 30 days are free, and your green lots and packaging import from the spreadsheet you use now. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.