How Stocksmith compares
Most inventory tools were built either for retailers who buy finished goods, or for factories with a dedicated operations team. If you make things in batches and you're somewhere in between, here's how the options actually stack up.
QuickBooks
Assemblified
Free & low-cost options
Feature tables all start to look the same. In practice, four things decide whether a tool fits a small-batch manufacturer.
Plenty of tools track products. Far fewer track the materials those products are made from — and fewer still handle a component that's itself manufactured from other components.
Making a batch should deduct the materials and add the finished goods, in one step. If that's a manual adjustment, your numbers drift the moment you get busy.
A cost that updates when supplier prices change is a different thing from a number you typed in once. Pricing decisions built on a stale figure are guesses.
Per-seat pricing scales badly for a small team where several people touch production. Enterprise MRP often means a sales call before you can even see the product.
Comparison pages only get you so far. Load a couple of your real recipes and see what your actual cost per unit looks like.
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