Inventory & Stock Management

ClientFlow's inventory module helps service professionals who sell products alongside their services. Whether you are a beauty salon selling hair products, a fitness studio selling supplements, or a therapist selling wellness items, this guide covers everything from adding products to advanced analytics.

By default, Inventory shows the everyday tools: Overview, Products, Scanner and Import. Analytics, Stock Takes, Purchase Orders, Transfers, Warehouses, Profitability and Cost Components appear when you switch on the Advanced toggle next to the inventory menu; they also stay visible on their own once you have data in one of them.

Adding Products

Build your product catalog by adding items with detailed information for tracking and sales.

Creating a Product

1. Go to Dashboard → Inventory
2. Click Add Product
3. Fill in the product details:
   • Product name — What you call the product
   • SKU — Optional stock code; it must be unique among your products
   • Barcode — Optional; it must also be unique among your products
   • Category — Group related products together
   • Description — Product details and features
   • Buying price — What you pay to acquire the product
   • Selling price — What clients pay
   • Initial quantity — Quantity in stock when you add the product
   • Reorder point — The stock level at or below which the product is flagged as low stock
4. Click Create

To add a product image, open the product from the list and upload it on its detail page.

Product Variants

If a product comes in different sizes, colors, or configurations, open the product and add variants on its detail page. Each variant has its own SKU, barcode, stock level, and pricing. For example, a skincare product might have 50ml, 100ml, and 200ml variants, each with different costs and selling prices.

Barcode Support

Each product and each variant has its own Barcode field (for example a UPC or EAN code), separate from the SKU. The Scanner tab in the inventory menu looks a product up by barcode or SKU: type the code in, or point your device's camera at the barcode (your browser will ask for camera permission). It shows the product's current quantity and selling price.

Stock Tracking

ClientFlow records every change to a product's stock as a stock movement, so you can see how a quantity got to where it is.

Stock Movements

Every change to stock quantity is recorded as a stock movement with a reason:

• Sale — Stock reduced when a product is sold to a client (you can link the client)
• Purchase — Stock increased when new inventory is received (you can link the supplier)
• Adjustment — Manual correction (e.g., after a physical stock count)
• Return — Stock coming back from a client, added to your stock
• Damaged — Stock written off due to damage
• Expired — Stock written off after its expiry date; ClientFlow also records this automatically for products past their expiry date
• Transfer — Stock moved between warehouses (recorded when you use Inventory → Transfers)
• Initial stock — The opening quantity when a product is added

Stock Takes

Perform physical stock counts regularly to ensure system accuracy. Go to Inventory → Stock Takes (part of advanced inventory) and click New Stock Take. ClientFlow prepares a count sheet with the expected quantity for each product; enter the actual quantities and the Diff column shows every discrepancy. When you complete the stock take, ClientFlow creates an adjustment movement for each product whose count differs from the expected quantity. This cannot be undone.

Low Stock Alerts

A product is flagged as low stock when its quantity falls to its reorder point or below. Flagged products appear in a Stock Alert banner on the Products page and in the Low Stock count on the inventory overview. If you have push notifications enabled, ClientFlow also sends a push notification with the number of products at or below their reorder point; this is checked a few times a day and sent at most once every 24 hours. It shows a count, not a product list.

ABC Analysis

ABC analysis ranks your products by the value of the stock you hold (quantity on hand times buying price) and groups them using the Pareto principle (80/20 rule). This helps you focus inventory management efforts on the products that matter most.

How ABC Classification Works

Class	Share of Stock Value	Management Strategy
A Items	First 80% of cumulative stock value	Tight control, frequent stock counts, priority reordering
B Items	Next 15% of stock value (80-95%)	Moderate control, regular monitoring
C Items	Remaining 5% of stock value	Minimal control, order in bulk when needed

Viewing ABC Analysis

Open Inventory → Analytics to see the ABC Analysis card. For each class it shows how many products it holds, their share of all your products, and their share of total stock value, and it lists your top Class A products. Only products with a buying price and stock on hand, in your account currency, are included. Use this to decide which products deserve the most attention and investment.

Break-Even Analysis

See how much margin each product earns and how much revenue you need to cover your fixed costs.

Contribution Margin

For each product, ClientFlow calculates the contribution margin:

Contribution Margin = Selling Price - Buying Price

This tells you how much each sale contributes to covering your fixed costs and generating profit. Products with higher contribution margins are more profitable per unit sold.

Break-Even Targets

The Break-Even Analysis card (Inventory → Analytics) has an optional Monthly Fixed Costs field. Enter your monthly fixed costs and click Calculate to see a break-even revenue and a monthly target, based on the average margin of the sales you recorded over the past 12 months. The card also lists your top-margin products and warns about products with a margin below 20%, which is useful when deciding whether to continue carrying a low-margin product.

Aging Reports

Identify slow-moving stock that ties up capital and may need to be discounted or cleared.

Aging Brackets

The Inventory Aging card (Inventory → Analytics) groups the products you have in stock by the number of days since their last recorded sale:

• 0-30 days — Fresh stock, recently received or actively selling
• 31-90 days — Moderate aging, monitor closely
• 91-180 days — Slow-moving, consider promotions or discounts
• 180+ days — Dead stock, likely needs clearance pricing or write-off
• Never sold — In stock, but no sale has been recorded for it

Taking Action on Aging Stock

For products in the 91+ day brackets, consider:

• Running a promotion or bundle deal to move the stock
• Offering the product as an add-on with popular services
• Returning unsold stock to the supplier (check your supplier agreements)
• Writing off the stock and reducing the minimum order quantity for future purchases

Depletion Forecast

Stock depletion prediction estimates when each product will run out based on current sales velocity.

Depletion Categories

Category	Days Until Stock-Out	Action Required
Critical	Less than 7 days	Reorder immediately
Warning	7-14 days	Place order this week
Attention	14-30 days	Schedule reorder

Products that are not expected to run out within about 30 days, or that have had no sales in the last 30 days, are not flagged.

How Predictions Work

ClientFlow calculates depletion estimates using your average daily sales rate over the past 30 days: the quantity you have on hand divided by that rate. Only stock movements recorded as sales count. The forecast is shown in the Stock Depletion Forecast card on your main Dashboard, which lists the products at risk and the days left for each. It is an estimate based on recent sales, so an unusually quiet or busy month will skew it.

Supplier Management

Keep track of your suppliers and the purchase orders you raise with them.

Adding Suppliers

Go to Dashboard → Suppliers to manage your supplier list. For each supplier, record:

• Supplier name
• Contact person, email, phone and address
• Tax ID
• Payment terms (Net 30, COD, etc.)
• Whether the supplier is active and whether it is a preferred supplier
• Notes and special instructions

Linking Products to Suppliers

Open a supplier's page, choose the Supplier Product Catalog tab and click Link Product. Search for a product and pick it, then optionally add the supplier's unit price, the supplier's own SKU for it, the lead time in days, a minimum order quantity and whether this is the preferred supplier for that product. The price is recorded in the product's currency. A product can be linked to a given supplier once. The link appears in the supplier's catalog and, when advanced inventory is on, the product's own page lists the supplier under Price Comparison. If you linked the wrong product, click the Unlink Product icon at the end of its row in that tab and confirm: the product is only removed from that supplier's catalog, the product and its stock are not deleted, and you can link it again later.

Ordering from Suppliers

Under Inventory → Purchase Orders (part of advanced inventory), click New Purchase Order, choose the supplier and the destination warehouse, and add the items with their quantity and unit price. A purchase order moves from draft to submitted to approved; when the goods arrive, use Receive Items to record what came in, in full or in part. Receiving adds the quantities to your stock. A supplier's page lists the purchase orders raised with that supplier.

Supplier Performance

On Pro and above, the Supplier Performance tab on a supplier's page shows an overall score and the figures behind it: on-time delivery rate, average lead time, order fulfillment rate, total spend and number of price changes. They are calculated from the purchase orders you have received from that supplier, so they fill in as you record deliveries. Use this data when negotiating terms or deciding between suppliers.