Inventory management software in Pakistan

Why stock is where most shops lose money quietly

In most Pakistani shops, the biggest asset is not the building or the cash box. It is the stock. A mid-sized kiryana wholesaler can easily have Rs 8 to 10 lakh sitting on shelves and in the godown. Yet that stock is usually tracked with the least care: a rough idea in the owner's head, maybe a register that was last updated before Eid.

Three things go wrong when stock is not recorded properly. You run out of fast items and lose sales to the shop next door. You over-buy slow items and your cash gets stuck. And small losses from breakage, wrong deliveries or theft go unnoticed until they add up to a serious number.

A worked example: what is your stock worth?

Take a small grocery wholesaler in Gujranwala with three main lines. Taajir multiplies quantity by cost price for each item, so the owner sees this without a calculator:

Now the owner does a physical count of oil and finds 112 tins on the shelf, while the system shows 120. Eight tins are missing. At Rs 2,650 each, that is Rs 21,200. It might be a delivery that was handed over without a bill, a damaged tin thrown away without an entry, or something worse. The point is that he now knows, and he knows which item to look at. Without a system figure to compare against, the count would have told him nothing.

How stock flows in Taajir

• Opening stock: you enter what you have today, item by item, once.
• Purchases: when a supplier's goods arrive, you record the purchase and the stock goes up.
• Sales: every invoice reduces stock for the items sold.
• Returns: a sale return puts goods back on the shelf, and a purchase return takes them out against the supplier.
• Kits and bundles: sell a gift pack or a set as one item, and the parts come out of stock.
• Multiple warehouses (Business plan): each godown keeps its own figure, stock moves between them by transfer, and reports show both the split and the total.
• Reports: stock report with valuation, daily stock movement and a full stock transactions log, from the counter PC or your phone.

Because stock moves with the bills you already make, there is no extra daily work. The discipline you need is simple: nothing leaves the shop without a bill, and nothing enters without a purchase entry.

Setting reorder points that make sense

Once you trust your stock figures, you can decide when to reorder each item instead of guessing. A simple rule: work out how many units you sell in a normal day, multiply by the number of days your supplier takes to deliver, and add a cushion. If you sell 15 packs of tea a day and the supplier takes 4 days, you need 60 packs to cover the wait. Add 20 as a cushion and your reorder point is 80 packs. Set 80 as the low-stock level for that item in Taajir, and it shows up on the alert list the day stock drops below. Our guide on reorder levels and safety stock explains this in more detail.

Valuing stock: which cost do you use?

Prices change. The oil you bought last month at Rs 2,600 and the oil you bought this week at Rs 2,650 are on the same shelf. Which cost is the stock worth? Accountants use methods like first-in-first-out or weighted average. You do not need to master them, but it helps to know the difference, especially when you work out profit. Read FIFO vs average cost for a plain explanation.

Who this is for

Taajir inventory works for any business that buys goods and sells them on: grocery stores, hardware and sanitary shops, auto parts dealers, electronics and mobile shops, garment shops and wholesalers. If you have a single shop, Standard at Rs 4,000 a month (or Rs 36,000 a year) covers you. If you keep stock in more than one place, Business at Rs 5,000 a month adds multiple warehouses and transfers. Shops that need IMEI or serial numbers add Lots & Serials, and batch and expiry tracking comes with the Manufacturing add-on.

Import your item list and opening stock from Excel for free. If you are starting from paper, begin with your 50 fastest-selling items and add the rest over the following weeks as you bill them.