Why Spreadsheets Are Costing You a Lot of Money (And How to Fix It).

Still using Excel for inventory planning?
It’s holding your business back. From lost sales to wasted time, the hidden costs of manual inventory management add up fast. Here's what you're missing, and how Flieber can help you turn things around.

The Hidden Costs of Sticking with Excel

• Lost Sales Due to Stockouts: Research shows that brands lose an average of 8% in sales due to stockouts—for example, if your business has $10M in annual sales, that’s $800,000 in lost revenue.
  
• Trapped Cash in Overstock: Excess inventory ties up capital and increases storage fees.
• Time and Labor Costs: Manually managing inventory drains valuable hours that could be spent on business growth.

Brands using Flieber reduce stockouts by 62% on average after one year, leading to $500,000 in recovered sales per year, all while cutting excess inventory and freeing up time for strategic decision-making.

These are the main reasons why you can’t continue using Excel for inventory planning and how Flieber can help you to solve those problems:

1. Data Input

Excel is built for static data entry, not for real-time decision-making. Manually updating spreadsheets with sales numbers, supplier lead times, and stock levels is time-consuming and prone to human error. Worse, as your business grows and you sell across multiple channels, keeping track of everything in Excel becomes chaotic.

2. Forecast calculation

Accurate demand forecasting is essential for maintaining the right inventory levels. However, Excel’s basic formulas, such as moving averages, fail to account for key factors like seasonality, demand spikes and the impact of stockouts. Without the ability to refine and adjust sales history, forecasts become flawed, leading to costly mistakes.

📉 Stockouts Skew Future Demand Estimates

Imagine you sold out of a best-selling product last month. If your forecasting method is a simple moving average, Excel will register lower sales for that period, even though demand was actually high. The result? Your future order quantities will be underestimated, increasing the risk of more stockouts.

📦 Overstock Due to Misinterpreted Trends

On the other hand, if sales temporarily spike due to a one-time event, like a holiday sale, but you don’t adjust for this in your forecast, Excel may suggest over-ordering, leaving you with excess inventory that ties up capital and increases storage costs.

3. Inventory and Replenishment visibility

Excel provides only a basic snapshot of your inventory,how much stock is on hand and what’s currently on order. While it allows for simple calculations like days of inventory based on forecasts, it lacks the ability to provide a dynamic, real-time view of inventory fluctuations. This limitation makes it difficult to anticipate stockouts, manage supply chain disruptions, or react to demand shifts effectively.

4. Time Drain

Updating inventory data manually in Excel is a never-ending task. Operators spend hours fixing formula errors, copying and pasting numbers, and cross-referencing different files. Instead of focusing on growth strategies, they are stuck in spreadsheet maintenance.

Conclusion: Stop Losing Money, Start Optimizing

Excel may have been sufficient when your business was smaller, but as you grow, it becomes a liability. Inefficient inventory planning leads to lost sales, tied-up capital, and wasted time, costs that are entirely avoidable.

It’s time to move beyond spreadsheets and embrace a smarter solution. Flieber streamlines inventory planning, helping businesses optimize stock levels, prevent costly mistakes, and scale seamlessly.

🚀 Ready to make the switch? Start your free trial today and take control of your inventory!