Free Apparel Inventory Spreadsheet
A ready-made Excel template for tracking apparel stock — finished units by style, size and colourway, orders across every channel you sell on, and the production runs and materials behind them when you need that depth.
- Finished stock per line, with a calculated stock flag
- One order log covering every sales channel
- Unit price beside unit cost, so margin per style is visible
- Free to download — Excel, Google Sheets, and Numbers
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What's included
Stock, orders, and cost per unit in one workbook
Apparel inventory falls over in two places: the count drifts because sales come in from more than one channel, and margin per style is a guess because unit cost was never recorded properly. The template addresses both, and the materials side is there when you need it.
Stock by style, size, and colourway
A row per sellable line, with SKU, category, retail price, on-hand quantity and a calculated in-stock flag — plus a starting quantity that feeds your opening inventory valuation.
- SKU, style name, and category per line
- On-hand quantity with stock status
- Current and start-of-year stock value
One order log, every channel
Website, marketplace, wholesale and market sales all land in the same tab, one line per style sold, with tax and shipping allocated per item — so you have one running total instead of several partial ones.
- Order date and ID to match back to each channel
- Quantity sold and line totals, calculated
- Unit cost carried through to a COGS tally
Margin per style, not per invoice
Retail price sits next to unit manufacture cost on the same row. If you produce in-house, that cost comes from the production runs you logged; if you have units made for you, enter the landed cost per unit and the rest still works.
- Unit price and unit cost side by side
- Landed costs including freight and duty
- Year-end inventory valuation and COGS tallies
Template walkthrough
What each tab of the spreadsheet tracks
The workbook is divided into seven linked tabs, each covering one part of your inventory workflow. It's built to run over a single calendar year, so it can calculate your start and end-of-year inventory values. Calculated columns are shaded in the file — enter your data everywhere else and let the formulas do the work.
Material Inventory
A complete list of the materials you hold — the foundation the rest of the workbook builds on. For each one:
- SKU and name — identify each material clearly (e.g. "Cotton Twill — Ecru, 260gsm")
- On-hand quantity — current stock, updated as you count
- Stock status — a calculated in-stock / out-of-stock flag
- Unit cost — the fully landed cost per tracking unit
- Tracking unit — metres, yards, or units — whatever you actually produce in
- Preferred vendor — where you usually buy it
- Starting quantity and value — feeds your start-of-year valuation
Personal Use
A log for anything withdrawn from stock that didn't go into a product you sold — samples, testing, or personal use. Keeping it separate means your COGS only reflects what genuinely went into production:
- Date removed and material — what left inventory, and when
- Quantity and unit cost — valued at the material's landed cost
- Total cost — calculated, and deducted from your year-end tallies
Purchases
A full record of every material purchase — one row per item bought, so five items from one supplier means five rows:
- Purchase date and vendor — when and where you bought it
- Item cost — what you paid, excluding shipping and tax
- Quantity purchased — in the material's tracking unit
- Proportional shipping and tax — allocated per item across the order
- Landed unit cost — calculated automatically: the true cost per unit including freight
Manufactures
The step most inventory spreadsheets skip entirely: recording what you made, and which materials each production run consumed:
- Manufacture date — when the run was made
- Product made — SKU and name of the finished product
- Materials used — one row per material consumed in the run
- Quantity used — how much to deduct from stock
- Total usage cost — calculated per row, building your cost per batch
Product Inventory
Your finished goods — what's made, priced, and ready to sell:
- SKU, name, and category — identify each sellable product
- Unit price — your retail price per item
- Manufacture cost — the material cost to make one unit, tallied from your Manufactures tab
- On-hand quantity and stock status — what's actually available to sell
- Inventory values — calculated starting and current stock value
Orders
Every sale, recorded one product per row so manufacture costs can be tallied against revenue:
- Order date and ID — match rows back to your sales channels
- Product and quantity sold — what went out the door
- Unit manufacture cost — feeds your COGS tally for the year
- Tax and shipping — proportional amounts per line item
- Totals — calculated line totals and grand totals
Reports
The tab that makes the rest worth maintaining — your key totals, tallied automatically through the year. Every figure here is calculated:
- Revenue totals — orders and tax, from your Orders tab
- Expense totals — purchases and tax, from your Purchases tab
- Inventory valuation — start-of-year value, plus purchases, less personal use and cost of product sold
- Year-to-date inventory total — the number your accountant asks for at tax time
Every inventory figure is derived from the unit costs you enter during the year, so the accuracy of your reports depends on the accuracy of those costs.
Get one accurate stock figure per style
Download the free spreadsheet and you'll have apparel stock, orders, and margin per style tracked in one place from today — no software required.
Download the free spreadsheet →How to set up apparel inventory tracking that holds up
Start with the unit you actually sell. In apparel that's almost never the style — it's the style in a specific size and colourway. One row per sellable line is the decision everything else depends on, and collapsing sizes into a single row is what makes a spreadsheet stop matching the shelf within a month.
Then decide where the count lives. If you're selling on a website and a marketplace, both draw from the same physical stock, and the moment you keep two figures you have neither. Log every sale in the orders tab regardless of where it came from, and treat that log as the source of truth the on-hand column is reconciled against.
Record unit cost properly from the start, because it's the hardest thing to reconstruct later. If you produce in-house, log the production run and its materials and the cost per unit falls out. If units are made for you, enter what a unit landed at — the manufacturing cost plus freight and duty, not the ex-works price. Both feed the same margin column.
Finally, count on a rhythm rather than annually. Apparel drifts through returns, damages, samples and market sales, and a monthly rolling count catches the gap while it's still small enough to explain.
Who uses this
Who should use this apparel inventory template?
Businesses holding apparel stock and needing one accurate figure per line — whether the units are produced in-house or made to order for you.
Apparel labels with a size range
A handful of styles multiplied across sizes and colourways. The template gives every line its own count, price, and cost rather than an average across the style.
Brands selling across several channels
Website, marketplace, wholesale, and markets pulling from one stock pool. One order log is the difference between a reconcilable count and a running argument.
Cut-and-sew and print operations
Producing in-house means the materials tabs earn their place — fabric, blanks, ink and trims logged per run, so cost per unit is measured rather than estimated.
Businesses ordering production runs in
If a factory makes your units, skip the materials tabs and enter the landed cost per unit. Stock, orders, margin, and year-end valuation all still work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the apparel inventory spreadsheet include?
Seven linked tabs: material inventory, personal use, purchases, manufactures, product inventory, orders, and reports. If you buy finished units in rather than producing them, the product inventory, orders and reports tabs work on their own — you enter a landed cost per unit and skip the materials side entirely. Delivered as an Excel file that also opens in Google Sheets and Numbers.
How should I structure rows for sizes and colourways?
One row per sellable line — so a style in four sizes and two colourways is eight rows, each with its own SKU, count, and cost. It's more rows than feels necessary at the start, and it's the only structure that stays reconcilable against the shelf. Collapsing sizes into one row means the total can be right while every individual size is wrong, which is the version that causes oversells.
Can I use it if a factory makes my apparel?
Yes. Enter each production order in the purchases tab so freight and duty get allocated across the units, then use the resulting landed cost per unit as the manufacture cost on your product rows. The materials and manufactures tabs can stay empty. What matters is that the cost you carry is the landed figure — ex-works price plus freight, duty and any inspection cost — because that's what the units actually cost you.
How do I handle sales from more than one channel?
Log every sale in the same orders tab and use the order ID column to note which channel it came from. One log, one stock figure. The limitation to be honest about: this is manual, so the count is only as current as your last entry — and multi-channel selling is exactly where hand-entry gets missed. Automatic order sync is the single clearest reason apparel businesses move from a spreadsheet to software.
Is it free, and does it work in Google Sheets?
Free, no payment and no expiry — enter your email above and we'll send the download link plus a written instruction guide. It's an Excel file that opens in Google Sheets and Apple Numbers with formulas intact. You'll also get occasional emails on inventory and costing for product businesses; unsubscribe any time.
When is a spreadsheet no longer enough for apparel?
When the row count outgrows manual maintenance — a full size range across a growing collection gets there faster than most people expect — or when a second sales channel means orders are being re-keyed. Stocksmith treats sizes and colourways as product variants, syncs orders from Shopify, Etsy, Faire and others so stock stays current, and keeps cost per line accurate as production costs move.
When you outgrow the spreadsheet
Stocksmith keeps the count current across channels
The spreadsheet holds up while the row count is small and one person enters the orders. What breaks it is selling in two places at once — the count is accurate right up until the entry that didn't get made, and you find out at the oversell.
Stocksmith runs the same structure with sizes and colourways as proper product variants. Orders sync in from your sales channels, stock adjusts as they arrive, and cost per line stays accurate as production costs move.
The discipline transfers directly — same lines, same costs, minus the re-keying.
No credit card required. Takes hours to set up, not weeks.
With the spreadsheet
- Every order from every channel typed in by hand
- One row per size per colourway, maintained manually
- An oversell is how you learn the count drifted
- Unit costs frozen at whatever you last entered
With Stocksmith
- Orders synced from Shopify, Etsy, Faire, and more
- Sizes and colourways handled as product variants
- One stock figure per line, current across channels
- COGS and valuation reports ready at tax time
Related resources
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Fabric Inventory Spreadsheet
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The same tracking, framed around producing a defensible cost of goods sold figure at year end.