How to Create a Simple Inventory System in Excel
An inventory database is essential for any product-based business to flourish. It provides easy access to valuable data and helps make key business decisions, such as ordering new inventory.
While you can find several intricate and detailed inventory management software on the internet, it’s also possible to create a simple inventory system in Excel. Not only is it possible, but it’s also quite easy.
Creating a Simple Inventory Database in Excel
To understand the process of creating an inventory system in Excel, let’s create an inventory database for a mobile phone shop by following the steps below:
Once the headers are ready, it’s time to fill in the information. By now, you should have something like this:
You canadd borders to make your Excel database visually pleasing, and easier to read, by following the steps below:
To add thefilteroption to your database:
Congratulations, you’ve just created an inventory database for a mobile shop.
You can easily update the database by adding new data or by modifying existing data. Also, you can filter out desired information from the newly created inventory database.
For example, if you want to filter your inventory database entries for a particular company:
Using the VLOOKUP Function in Excel Inventory System
Suppose you want to search for the price of a particular item in your database. Instead of searching for it in the database, you canuse the VLOOKUP function in Excel. The formula for VLOOKUP is as follows:
When you apply the VLOOKUP function, Excel locates the LOOKUP_VALUE in the first column of the assigned cell range. That is why, for the VLOOKUP function to work, it’s important that your LOOKUP_VALUE is in the first column of the TABLE_ARRAY (assigned cell range.)
After finding the LOOKUP_VALUE, Excel counts the number of cells based on the specified COL_INDEX_NUMBER and returns a result. The return value will either be exact or approximate, depending upon whether you specified a FALSE or TRUE value to RANGE_LOOKUP.
Now that you’ve got a fair understanding of the VLOOKUP function, let’s use it to extract data from our mobile phone inventory database. To search for a price of a particular mobile phone from your database, follow the steps below:
Excel will return a #N/A error, but don’t worry. That’s just because we haven’t added our desired SKU (LOOKUP_VALUE) under the SKU header.
To find out the price of a particular SKU (from our assigned range i.e. our database), type it under the SKU header and Excel will return the exact price of the item. you may do this for any item within the database.
To find out further information about the item, you repeat the same process. Let’s say you also want to find out the number of available units of an item. To do that, create another header next to thePriceheader and name itNo. of Units. Under this new header, type in the following formula:
Notice that, while the rest of the formula is the same, our COL_INDEX_NUMBER has changed from 4 (in the previous formula) to 5. That’s because theNo. of Unitsheader is in the 5th column of our database.
How to Create an Inventory System Using Excel Templates
If you don’t want to go through the hassle of manually creating an inventory system in Excel, you can choose the easier route of using an Excel inventory template.
Now, you can add or remove headers according to your needs and start using the template to manage your inventory by adding items and updating relevant information.
Take Your Excel Inventory System to the Next Level
Now that you’ve got the basics down, it’s time to take your Excel inventory system to the next level. You can easily do that by learning about different Excel formulas and applying them to your Excel inventory database. This will help you get creative with your Excel inventory database, and you’ll be able to use it more effectively.
Here are some formulas you need to use to track an inventory of your products in an Excel spreadsheet.
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