Most salons start tracking inventory in a spreadsheet, and for a while that is exactly the right call. It is free, it is yours, and it is faster than learning a new tool. This guide gives you a clean one to start from, shows you how to actually keep it current, and is honest about the point where a spreadsheet quietly starts costing you more than it saves.
The free template
Here is a salon inventory template you can copy and use today, no email required:
Open the salon inventory template in Google Sheets
Clicking it drops a copy straight into your own Google Drive: yours to edit, nothing shared back to us. Prefer Excel? In your copy, use File, then Download, then Microsoft Excel.
It does two useful things for you automatically:
- Reorder flags on its own the moment Stock Quantity drops below your Reorder Level, so what needs buying jumps out the instant you open the sheet.
- Inventory Value is calculated for you (Cost Per Item times Stock Quantity), so you can see what is sitting on your shelves in dollars.
The rest you fill in, and the columns are chosen for how salons actually work: Item Number, Name, Manufacturer, and Description to keep reorders unambiguous, Cost Per Item and Stock Quantity, a Reorder Level that drives the flag, Days per Reorder and Item Reorder Quantity so you know how often and how much to buy, and an Item Discontinued? flag for products you have stopped carrying.
How to actually keep it current
A template only helps if the numbers stay true. Three habits keep it honest:
- Count on a schedule, not when you remember. Pick one quiet slot a week and update Stock Quantity in one sitting. The Reorder flags and Inventory Value update themselves from there.
- Set real Reorder Levels. This is the column that does the work. Set it so an order lands before you run out, and use Days per Reorder and Item Reorder Quantity to size each order.
- Mark discontinued items instead of deleting them. Flag products you no longer carry so the history stays intact and your Inventory Value stays accurate.
For expiry-sensitive items (developer, lash adhesive, some treatments), add a column for the expiry date and sort by it now and then, so you use the oldest first and catch anything about to turn before it becomes a write-off.
That is genuinely all a small salon needs to get started, and for a solo room it can carry you a long way.
Where a spreadsheet quietly breaks
The spreadsheet does not fail loudly. It drifts. Here is where the gap opens up, usually as you get busier:
- It does not deduct product used during a service. Every colour, every treatment, every lash set uses back-bar stock, and none of it shows up unless someone remembers to subtract it by hand. Retail you sell at the counter is easy to track. Product consumed in the chair is the part that silently goes missing, and it is most of what a salon actually uses.
- It drifts from reality. Miss a week of counts, or have two people editing, and the sheet and the shelf stop agreeing. Once you stop trusting it, you stop using it.
- It does not talk to your sales or your books. The cost of the product you used does not flow anywhere. At month-end you are back to estimating cost of goods by hand, which is the slow part of doing the books.
- It only warns you when you look. The reorder flag helps, but a spreadsheet cannot ping you when you are not in it. You still find out you are out of 20 volume developer when a stylist is mid-colour.
None of this means the spreadsheet was a mistake. It means you outgrew it. The tell is simple: when keeping the sheet accurate takes more time than the sheet saves, it has stopped being an asset.
What replaces it
The job a spreadsheet cannot do is connect three things that should never have been separate: what you used, what it cost, and what you have left. That is the gap Flowesce is built to close.
In Flowesce, finishing a service deducts the product it used automatically, the same moment you mark it complete. Stock stays true without a weekly count. The cost posts to your profit and loss, so your month-end numbers are mostly already done. Batch expiry is tracked for you, oldest first, with a heads-up before anything turns. And low-stock alerts mean you reorder before the shelf is empty, not after.
If you are weighing tools rather than spreadsheets, our Fresha alternatives and Mangomint alternatives guides walk through the options for solo and growing salons.
Start with the spreadsheet above. It is the right first step. When the counting starts costing you more than it saves, that is the signal you have outgrown it, and that is exactly the point Flowesce was built for. See how it works or join the waitlist for founding-member pricing.