Inventory tracking software: an app or your own system?

What inventory tracking software actually tracks

Inventory tracking software keeps a running count of what you have and where it sits. Under every count is a list of movements. Stock arrives from a supplier or leaves in a sale. It gets used on a job, moves to another shelf or truck, or gets written off as damaged. Each movement adds or subtracts, and the number on screen is the total.

That is why two apps can show the same count and still be very different. A good one tells you why a number changed, who changed it, and which sale, order or job it belongs to. A weak one only shows the number. When the shelf and the screen disagree, nobody can say why.

For example, a lighting showroom’s screen says 4 of one pendant, but the shelf has 2. One went out on a special order nobody marked, and one is a floor model that was never counted as stock. The app didn’t fail at counting. It never heard about those two movements.

Most inventory apps sell the same core pieces:

• An item list: name, SKU or part number, photo, cost, price and supplier.
• Counts by location: the shop floor, the back room, a warehouse or each truck.
• Receiving: a delivery checked in against the purchase order you sent.
• Low-stock alerts and reorder points, so you order before you run out.
• Barcode or QR scanning from a phone, so counting doesn’t mean typing.
• Stock counts and adjustments, with a reason for each change.
• Reports: what sold, what sits, and what your stock is worth.

Four places your inventory tracking can live

Before you compare brands, decide where stock should be tracked. There are four common places, and the right one depends on where your stock leaves the building. The prices below come from each vendor’s own page when we checked in October 2026. Plans change often, so check before you buy.

A spreadsheet is a fair starting point for a short item list counted by one person. It stops working when two people edit it at once, or when sales happen in another app and nobody copies them across.

Once you outgrow a spreadsheet, these are the four places:

• In your point of sale. For retail inventory, this is the usual starting point: if most stock leaves over a counter, the till already knows what sold. Square says basic item management comes with Square Free, and its page lists low-stock alerts and stock reports among its free tools. Square Plus, at $49 a month per location, adds more inventory features, and Premium, at $149 a month per location, adds more advanced ones. Square lists barcode labels, stock transfers between locations, and purchase orders among the Plus and Premium features. Shopify charges $89 a month for each POS Pro location, on top of a Shopify plan from $25 a month. Its FAQ says the $89 is billed yearly. POS Pro adds stock counts, purchase orders and low-stock alerts.
• In your accounting. If you want inventory and accounting software in one, QuickBooks Online lists “Track and manage inventory” on its Plus plan, at $140 a month for 5 users before any discount. The Free, Simple Start and Essentials plans don’t list it. This fits when you mostly buy and resell items and your bookkeeper already works in QuickBooks.
• In a standalone inventory app. Sortly is one example, built around a phone app with barcode and QR scanning on every plan. Its free plan covers 100 unique items and 1 user. Paid plans, billed monthly, run from $49 a month (500 items, 2 users) to $299 a month (5,000 items, 8 users). Low-stock alerts start on the $49 Advanced plan. Stock counts and purchase orders start on the $149 Ultra plan. A QuickBooks Online connection, for sending invoices and purchase orders, starts on the $299 Premium plan. inFlow is another option that keeps inventory and orders in one system. Its Lite plan is $129 a month billed monthly, for 2 team members and 1 location, plus $29 a month for each extra team member. Both Sortly and inFlow cost less a month on yearly billing. You’ll also see Zoho Inventory and Odoo on review lists, so check their pricing pages against your own item, user and location counts.
• Inside your own system. Stock becomes part of the same records as your orders, jobs and invoices. A special order, a reserved delivery or a part used on a job changes the count without a second entry. This costs more up front, and it only pays off when those links matter to you.

References: Square: Inventory management software (opens in a new tab) · Shopify: POS pricing (opens in a new tab) · QuickBooks: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Sortly: Pricing plans (opens in a new tab) · inFlow: Pricing (opens in a new tab)

Six questions that decide which kind you need

Feature lists look alike, so choose by how stock moves in your business. Answer these six questions on paper before any demo. The answers point to one of the four options above.

• Where does stock leave? Over a counter points to your point of sale. Online and in store points to something that keeps one count for both. Used on jobs, or sold today and delivered next month, points to something tied to your orders or jobs.
• How many items, and in how many places? Count unique items, not the quantity of each, because that is how plans like Sortly’s are limited. Count every place stock sits, including each truck, since some tools charge by location.
• Who touches stock? List everyone who receives, sells, moves or counts it. Each may need a login, and per-user or per-location fees add up.
• What else does the count need to know? Special orders, customer deposits, floor models, items held for a delivery date, serial numbers or returns. If the answer is “nothing,” almost any app will do.
• Which apps must it talk to? Usually QuickBooks Online, Square or Shopify. Check which plan includes each connection, and whether data flows both ways.
• How do you count today? A full count once a year, one shelf each week, or never. Pick a tool that matches the habit you will actually keep.

References: Sortly: Pricing plans (opens in a new tab) · Square: Inventory management software (opens in a new tab) · Shopify: POS pricing (opens in a new tab)

How it plays out in a few businesses

Here is how those answers tend to look in practice. These are examples to test against your own business, not any one vendor’s limits.

• A furniture or lighting showroom. Floor models, stock in a warehouse, special orders from vendors, deposits and delivery dates. A point of sale counts what’s on the floor. It may not know that a sofa is sold, part-paid and waiting for a delivery slot. If staff keep a binder of special orders beside the till, that is the gap. Our guides to special orders and deposits and booking delivery days cover those pieces.
• A gift shop or boutique that also sells online. This is what point-of-sale inventory does well. The question is whether the in-store and online counts stay as one. If you sell on Shopify and ring up on something else, read keeping in-store and Shopify stock in one count before you buy anything.
• A plumbing or HVAC company with a parts room and trucks. Each truck is a location, and parts leave on jobs, not sales. The count matters most when a used part should also land on the customer’s invoice. If the inventory app and the job app don’t share data, the tech records the part twice or not at all. Our guide to job management software versus a custom job tracker covers the job side.
• A café. A small café might count milk, beans and cups on a weekly sheet, and that can be enough. Tracking each ingredient by recipe as drinks sell takes a lot of setup for a short menu. Custom rarely pays off here, unless catering orders also need to hold the same stock.
• A property manager. Filters, faucets, paint and smoke alarms across several buildings. A standalone app often fits. Sortly, for example, lets you connect items to jobs and work orders, with the number of open jobs limited by plan.

Reference: Sortly: Pricing plans (opens in a new tab)

Test an inventory app with your own stock before you pay

A demo shows an app with tidy sample items. Your stock has sizes, odd units and items with no barcode. Most apps let you try first. When we checked in October 2026, Sortly offered a 14-day free trial of its paid plans, and Square had a free plan. Block out a week and run this list:

• Enter 30 real items, including the messiest: one with sizes or colors, one sold by the foot or the box, and one with no barcode.
• Receive a real delivery against a purchase order, including one short shipment.
• Sell one item at the counter and, if you sell online, one on the website. Check that the count drops once for each.
• Move stock between two locations, like the back room and a truck.
• Count one shelf with a phone, then compare the app’s number with the shelf.
• Set a low-stock alert and trigger it. See who gets told, and how.
• Connect QuickBooks Online if you use it, and check that a sale or purchase lands once, with the right cost.
• Export your items and their movement history to a spreadsheet file, and open it.
• Price the plan that includes every feature, user and location you just tested, not the plan on the banner. Then add the extras: scanners or a label printer, card fees on a point of sale, and hours spent entering items and training staff.

References: Sortly: Pricing plans (opens in a new tab) · Square: Inventory management software (opens in a new tab)

The records behind every count

An inventory count is only as good as the records behind it. When the number is wrong, you need to find the movement that went missing. So every change should carry a date, a person, a reason and a link to the order, sale or job behind it.

Your accountant cares about this too. The IRS says that if you must account for inventory, you value it at the start and end of each tax year. A business that keeps a running book count must also take a physical count at reasonable intervals and adjust the books to match. Small business taxpayers can choose not to keep an inventory, but must still use a method that clearly reflects income. This isn’t tax advice, so ask your accountant which method your business uses.

Whatever tool you pick, it should keep:

• An item list with the cost, supplier and location of each item.
• A movement log: received, sold, used on a job, moved, returned or written off, with who and when.
• Count sheets with the date, the person who counted, and any difference found.
• Adjustments with a reason, like damaged, stolen, found or entered wrong.
• A year-end count and value your accountant can use.
• A plain-file export of all of it, saved somewhere you control every few months.

Reference: IRS: Publication 538, Accounting Periods and Methods (opens in a new tab)

When stock should live inside your own system

Most small shops never need custom inventory software. A point of sale or a standalone app is cheaper, ready this week, and kept up to date by the vendor. For example, a boutique with 300 items, one shop and Square is well served by Square’s own inventory. Building that from scratch would cost more than years of fees.

You also don’t have to replace what works. You can keep Square, Shopify or QuickBooks Online as the place sales and books happen. Then build only the missing piece, like special orders or parts on jobs, and connect it so the count stays in one place.

Stock belongs inside your own system when the count depends on records an inventory app can’t see. If two or three of these are true, price both paths side by side. Our comparison of custom and off-the-shelf software has a three-year cost check you can fill in with your own numbers.

• Items are sold before they arrive: special orders, backorders or deposits that hold stock for one customer.
• Stock is held for a delivery or install date, and the count should show what is free to sell, not just what is on the shelf.
• Parts leave on jobs, and each part used should land on the job and the invoice without anyone retyping it.
• Someone copies the same sale or part between a point of sale, an inventory app and a job app every week.
• You track serial numbers or warranty dates for each customer, like appliances or equipment you install.
• You pay for a top plan, or for every truck as a location, for one feature you use.

How we build stock into a business system, and what it costs

We build custom business software where stock is part of the same records as your customers, orders, jobs, quotes and invoices. A special order, a reserved delivery or a part used on a job updates the count without a second entry. We connect to QuickBooks Online, Square, Stripe, Shopify, Google Calendar, and Gmail or Outlook. For anything else, we check it before we quote.

These are our typical prices as of October 4, 2026. A focused fix, like connecting two apps you already use or adding one stock report, is $750–$3,000 over 1–⁠2 weeks. One business system, like special orders and deposits connected to Square and QuickBooks Online, is $6,000–$18,000 over 6–⁠10 weeks. A full system with customers, orders, stock, delivery scheduling, invoices, payments and a crew phone app is $18,000–$40,000 over 10–⁠16 weeks.

Every launch includes 30 days of fixes, and monthly care is priced in your quote. You own the code we write once it’s paid in full; hosting runs on our account, and you can take it over after payment. The first call is free, and you get a fixed price in writing within 48 hours of it. If Square, Shopify or an app like Sortly fits your stock better, we’ll tell you.