I recently visited a company that uses Excel for inventory management which is not unusual as many small businesses use Excel to manage areas of business for which they do not have a purpose-built system. But this visit reminded me how dangerous it can be to use Excel for certain types of business activity.
(To be clear: Excel is an outstanding business tool and I use it all the time. But like any tool, it works best when used for appropriate purposes.)
At this company, their Excel spreadsheets are manually updated when shipments arrive, when they get around to it. And they’re updated again when products are shipped out, some time after the fact. They use these spreadsheets for information about inventory: what’s in stock, when to replenish and how much to order. They also use them for costing inventory, including landed costs like duty, brokerage and freight. So these are pretty important business tools, right? Now read this question and answer exchange with the business owner:
