Interactive tutorial · ~5 min · 10 steps
Stock manager: always know what you have
The Stock manager keeps a product list with quantities that go down as you sell from a chat and flags items that need reordering.
Runs on a fictional copy of the screen with a voice guide. Nothing you click reaches WhatsApp.
What the tour covers, step by step
Keep a product list that stays true: add stock, sell from the chat, and see what needs reordering.
- 01
What you have, and what it is worth
Six plain numbers: how many products, how many units, what they cost you, what they would bring in, and what is running low or already gone.
Read the narration
Welcome to the Stock manager. This page answers the two questions you get asked every day: do we have it, and how much money is sitting on the shelf. Units on hand adds up every unit across your products. Value at cost is what you paid your supplier for what is still here — that is your own money, tied up. Value at retail is what it would bring in if every unit sold. The last two tiles are the ones to watch: running low, and out of stock. Two honest details about the money. Archived products are left out of both totals, and if something has gone below zero because you oversold it, it counts as zero rather than dragging the value down.
- 02
Add a product
Only the name is required. The code must be unique, the photo comes from your media library, and the opening stock is saved as your first stock entry.
Read the narration
Let us add something. New product opens this drawer, and only the name is required — but a little care here saves hours later. The product code, or SKU, is your own short code: it has to be unique, and it is what a spreadsheet import uses to recognise this product again. Category groups things together. Unit is how you count it — pieces, kilos, boxes — and halves are fine, so half a kilo is a perfectly good quantity. Then the money. Your cost is what you pay for it, the selling price is what the customer pays, and InboxCRM works out the profit margin between them as you type. Fill the cost in even roughly, because it is what makes the stock valuation honest. Warn me at is your own reorder line: when the quantity falls to that number or below, the product turns up in the low-stock panel. Opening stock is not typed straight into the level either — it is saved as your first stock entry, so even the very first number has a reason written next to it. The barcode field is plain text: point a scanner at the box and it types the code in for you. And the photo comes from the same media library your quick replies use, so you choose it once and reuse it everywhere.
- 03
One row per product
Stock opens that product's drawer — the only place a quantity changes. The pencil edits it, the box archives it, the bin deletes it.
Read the narration
Back on the list. Each product is one row: photo, name with your code underneath, category, what you sell it for, what it cost you, how many are left, and a status pill — in stock, running low, out of stock, or archived. The bar above searches name, code, barcode and category all at once, and the two chips narrow the list to low stock only, or bring the archived products back into view. On the right, Stock opens that product's drawer, and that is where every change to the quantity happens — you never type over the number. The pencil edits the details. The box archives, and the bin deletes, and those two are not the same thing at all. Archiving keeps the product and its whole history but hides it from your list, from the valuation and from the picker inside chats — exactly what you want for last season's stock. Deleting removes the product and every one of its history lines for good. When in doubt, archive.
- 04
Every change is a movement
Add stock when it arrives, Remove stock when it leaves. Type a quantity and a note, and the preview shows the new level before you save.
Read the narration
This is the Stock and history half of the drawer. At the top: what is on hand right now, the limit it warns at, and the price. Underneath, the three verbs the whole feature rests on. Add stock when a delivery arrives or a customer brings something back. Remove stock when you sell face to face, give away a sample, or break one. Stocktake when you have counted the shelf. Six t-shirts arrived, so: Add stock, six, and a note — delivery from supplier. The line under the row does the arithmetic for you before you commit: new level, thirty. That note is worth the two seconds it costs; in three weeks it is the only thing that will remind you where those six came from. And if you ever remove more than you have, InboxCRM still saves it. The preview warns you in amber that it goes below zero and records it as oversold, because a shop that has promised something it does not have needs the ledger to say so.
- 05
A stocktake is different
Add and Remove move the number by an amount. A stocktake REPLACES it with what you counted — and the preview tells you how far out the app was.
Read the narration
Now the one that trips everybody up the first time. You have counted the shelf: there are twenty-two shirts, not twenty-four. Do not reach for Remove and try to work out the difference in your head. Switch to Stocktake and simply type what you counted. The field even renames itself to counted quantity, and the preview spells it out: after the count, twenty-two pieces, two fewer than the app thinks. Whatever it believed before, the level becomes exactly twenty-two. Nothing is swept under the carpet either — the count is saved as its own line in the history, so the two shirts that walked away stay visible. Do this once a month for whatever sells fastest, and your numbers stay worth believing.
- 06
The history explains every number
When it happened, what happened, how much moved and the level it was left at. Sales made in a chat carry the customer's name and the price charged.
Read the narration
Underneath sits this product's ledger, newest first, and it is the reason the number at the top of the page can be trusted. Every line keeps both the amount that moved and the level it left behind. Read this one from the bottom up: thirty arrived as opening stock, twelve went to a market stall, one was sold to Marta at nineteen ninety-nine, a monthly count found sixteen rather than seventeen — and then Ahmed ordered eighteen when there were only sixteen. Look at the left-after column: minus two, in amber. InboxCRM let that sale happen and told the truth about it, and the two deliveries above brought the shelf back to twenty-four. Nothing in this table is ever edited or removed; a mistake is put right by adding another line. So if a number ever looks wrong, the answer is always in here.
- 07
What to reorder
Everything at or below its own limit, lowest first, with sold-out products named. Add stock on a row opens that product straight on the Add stock form.
Read the narration
This amber panel sits right under the numbers and only appears when something needs you. Every product carries its own limit, because two mugs left is fine and two wedding cakes left is not. The test is at or below, so if your limit is three and you have exactly three, it is already on the list — you are warned while you can still do something about it. The coffee shows two and a half kilos, a reminder that quantities do not have to be whole numbers, and the tote bag is flagged as sold out, which means you cannot fulfil an order for it right now. Add stock on any row opens that product straight on its Add stock form, so the fix is one click away. And in Stock settings further down the page, warn me when something runs low adds a notification the moment a sale drops a product to its limit.
- 08
Sell without leaving the chat
The Stock tab finds the product, writes the message for you to edit, and records the sale against this contact — with an optional receipt.
Read the narration
Here is where it pays off every day. Maria is asking about the blue t-shirt. Open the chat-tools panel, choose the Stock tab, and search — by name, code, barcode or category. An exact code beats a loose name match, so a scanner pointed at the box, or a code you paste in, lands on the right product straight away. Picking it writes the message for you: the name in bold, the price, and your description underneath. Nothing has been sent — that is a box you can edit, so add only three left if you like, then press Send photo and the product picture goes with your words as the caption. When Maria says yes, fill in how many, and if you gave her a different price today, what you actually charged. Record sale takes it off your stock and tags the movement with her name, so the history remembers who bought it. Sold plus send receipt does the same and sends her a short thank-you with the total. And bought before is the small touch that makes customers loyal: everything this contact has bought from you already, right there while you are talking to them.
- 09
Bring in a whole list at once
Rows are matched by code: one you already have updates that product, a new one is added. Every problem row is listed with its number.
Read the narration
If your products already live in a spreadsheet, do not retype them. Download the template so the column names are right, fill it in, and import it. Only name is required, and prices are written the normal way — nineteen ninety-nine, not in cents. Every row is matched to your products by its code: a code you already have updates that product, a code that is new adds one. When it finishes you get the tally — added, updated, skipped — and a line for each row that had a problem, with its row number, so you can fix the file instead of guessing. Two details worth knowing. If your file has a quantity column, the levels are set to what it says and saved as a stocktake, so even a bulk edit is explained in the history. If it has no quantity column at all, your stock is left completely alone. And export goes the other way: one row per product for your accountant, or a printout to count against.
- 10
Start with five products
Open the real Stock manager, add what you sell most, and count it once so the opening numbers are true. After that the ledger keeps itself. Next: the Order manager tour.
Read the narration
That is the Stock manager. My advice: do not try to enter everything on day one. Add the five things you sell most, count them honestly, and set a low-stock number you would actually act on. After that it is small habits — add stock when a delivery arrives, record the sale from the chat while you are still talking to the customer, and glance at the amber panel before you place an order. Open the real page from the button here, or carry on to the Order manager tour, which picks the story up after the sale and follows the order to your customer's door.