Notebook, Excel or software: which suits you

"Which software should I buy?" is the question small shop owners ask most often. But it is usually asked in the wrong order. Before choosing a tool you need to size up the scale of your own business: how many items you sell a day, how many people keep the records and how many places your stock sits in. Those three numbers make the choice between a notebook, Excel and software much easier.

Notebook: simplest and cheapest

If you sell dozens of items a day, your range stays under a few hundred products and you keep the records alone, a plain notebook can be enough. Its advantage is that it needs no electricity, no internet and no training, and everything is in front of your eyes.

Its drawbacks are just as clear. Searching a notebook is slow, totals have to be added by hand, a mistake is hard to correct and a lost notebook means lost records. If you work with a notebook, give each product its own page and write receipts and sales in two columns, so the balance is visible at a glance.

Excel: the best starting point for many

When sales reach hundreds a day or the range grows noticeably, Excel (or Google Sheets) is far more convenient than a notebook. The table calculates for you: balance, total value, profit. Finding an item by name takes a second, and the same file can be opened from a phone.

Excel works well under these conditions:

• the range is no more than a few hundred items, at most a thousand or two;
• one or two people open the sheet;
• the shop or storeroom is in one place;
• sales volume is small enough to enter by hand every day.

The risk lies elsewhere: Excel allows everything. Someone deletes a formula, someone types in the wrong cell, two people keep two copies of the same file. So save a copy of the file every day.

Software: when you really need it

Software (for example 1C, or an accounting system connected to the till) pays for itself in these situations:

• goods are sold from two or more branches or stockrooms;
• several sellers work at once and each one enters sales immediately;
• you have a cash register or barcode scanner and manual entry eats up time;
• you need the balance in real time, so you can see an item running out during the sale;
• wholesale, credit sales and customer settlements have become complicated.

Software has its costs: learning it, setting it up and, usually, a monthly or one-off fee. But the bigger danger is different: badly configured software shows wrong figures in a pretty format. Before moving to software, your item names, prices and balances must be in order, otherwise the old confusion simply moves into the new system.

Four questions to decide

Answer them honestly:

1. How many receipts or sales do you have a day? Fewer than ten, a notebook; ten to a hundred, Excel; more than a hundred, think about software.
2. How many people keep the records? One person can manage in Excel; two or three at the same time need software or a shared online sheet.
3. What does a mistake cost you? With cheap goods a mistake or two goes unnoticed, but with expensive goods even one is felt.
4. Do you have order in your records? Not even the best software helps disorderly records.

Often the best route is a gradual move. First switch from the notebook to Excel and keep everything in the table for a month or two. In that time you will see which columns you really need, which reports you want and where you make mistakes. When you later choose software, you will know exactly what to demand of it and will rely on your own needs rather than a salesperson's attractive promises. Do not delete the old table: keep it in parallel with the software for a few months and compare the balances in both systems.

Conclusion

The best tool is the one you actually use every day. A simple table filled in daily beats a sophisticated program you stopped opening. Whatever you choose, item names, prices and opening balances must be correct first. AniqHisob can help with that: we run a stock count and put your records in order, after which a notebook, Excel or software will work with the right figures.