Starter Item List — six columns
Six columns, one afternoon. Print it with the quantity column blank, count one location at a time, and write the numbers by hand as you go. Type the handwritten numbers in afterwards.
Organization: _______________________
Area / location counted: _______________________
Counted by: ______________________
Date counted: ______________________
Page: ______ of ______
Date printed: ______________________
| # |
SKUyour own short code |
Namewhat people call it out loud |
Quantitycounted, not remembered |
Min Stockreorder point — 1 or blank, never 0 |
Locationbroad to narrow |
Supplierwho you get it from |
| 1 |
GLV-BLU-M | Nitrile gloves - blue - medium | 6 |
6 | Kitchen - upper cabinets | Restaurant Depot |
| 2 |
TBL-6FT | Folding table - 6 ft | 8 |
— | Back hall closet - top shelf | — |
| 3 |
URN-40C | Coffee urn - 40 cup | 2 |
— | Kitchen - upper cabinets | — |
Never write 0 in Min Stock. In InventoryQuick — and in most alerting systems — zero is not a very low threshold; it is the off switch. A row with a reorder point of zero can never be flagged, because the check skips every item whose reorder point is not above zero. For any item where the arithmetic gives you less than one, write 1 (tell me when I am down to the last one) or leave it blank and accept that the item is not on the alerting system at all. Equipment does not need a reorder point; fill this column for consumables only.
There is no cost or value column, on purpose. Adding money on day one is a common reason a first list dies at row forty. If you add it later, use two clearly separate columns — Cost for what you pay and Price for what you charge — and never ship one column doing both jobs.
If you later move this into InventoryQuick
- These headers — SKU, Name, Quantity, Min Stock, Location, Supplier and an optional Category — are read as the fields they look like, with no renaming. A preview step shows which column it read as what before the rows land, so you can correct it if it guessed wrong.
- The locations and suppliers named in those cells — and categories, if you add that optional Category column — are created as the rows import; you do not have to set them up first.
- This importer brings in items, and only items. There is no separate location file, so a location that needs a parent location or a type has to be set up in the app afterwards — by hand or by asking the Assistant — and importing gives you a flat set of location names, not a hierarchy.
- A low-stock alert fires when an item's total on hand across every location drops to or below the Min Stock on that item. Because the check reads a company-wide total, it cannot tell you that one room's shelf is empty while another room is well stocked.