Can I use Excel for inventory management?

Yes, Excel works for inventory management at small scale — and it's the right starting point for many businesses: a few dozen SKUs, one location, one person updating it. A sheet with SKU, description, quantity, reorder level and supplier covers the basics for free.

The honest breaking points, in the order they usually arrive: multiple people editing (version chaos), sales channels (every Shopify/marketplace order needs manual entry — this is where oversells start), no barcode scanning (typos accumulate), no history (who changed this number and why?), and no automation (nothing tells you to reorder; you have to look).

A useful tripwire: when you're updating the spreadsheet daily and still getting surprised by stockouts or oversells, the spreadsheet isn't saving money anymore — it's costing sales. That's the graduation moment, typically somewhere around a few hundred orders a month.