Free inventory management in Google Sheets

The key facts

• The template: two tables — products and movements — with quantity as a SUMIF formula, never typed in place.
• The sharing rules: one sheet, one owner, everyone else edits only the movements table; versions live in history, not filenames.
• The ceiling: commitments (orders draining stock in real time) and the accounting handoff — the record layer no sheet clears.
• BSimple's role: import the sheet when the ceiling arrives; the trial runs your products in the system for free first.
• The full picture: how the inventory record works is the hub page for everything above.

The template: two tables and one rule

Table one, products: code, description, cost, reorder level, location. Table two, movements: date, product code, quantity in or out, reason, operator. Quantity per product is then a formula — SUMIF over the movements table — and never a cell anyone types into. That one rule is the difference between a list and a ledger: every quantity traceable to the movements that justify it, errors visible as discrepancies instead of overwritten into silence.

On top of it: a low-stock flag (conditional formatting when quantity dips under reorder level), data validation on product codes in the movements table, and a barcode column for scan entry from a phone or scanner. Share the sheet with edit access restricted to the movements table — the products table belongs to its owner. The same template in Excel works identically; Sheets' advantage is the sharing, not the structure.

The rules that keep it honest

• A movement row per event, immediately. The sheet is only as true as the delay between the physical move and the row.
• No "correcting" quantities. A discrepancy is recorded as a movement with a reason (count correction), not as an edit to the formula result — the evidence survives.
• Codes are sacred. Validation on entry; renaming a product is a decision, not a typo.
• One owner. Multi-user editing is Sheets' superpower, but someone still owns the structure, the codes and the weekly review.

The ceiling, stated plainly: Sheets cannot deduct stock when an order is committed — the deduction happens when someone remembers the row, and overselling lives in the lag. Nor can it hand invoices to the books without re-entry. We build BSimple, so weigh that: it is the record layer for wholesale, manufacturing, distribution and trade businesses — live quantities, orders deducting on approval, purchase orders from demand, batch tracking, the accounting handoff to Xero or MYOB — from $180/month AUD, importing your sheet rather than discarding it. Sheets versus a record, compared, the Excel equivalent and the free ladder in full cover the surrounding ground; the trial is the test that ends the debate on your own products.