I do inventory for a company that's almost 30 years old, and it's a libreOffice spreadsheet that gets updated when someone does an inventory count on paper and then transscribes it into the spreadsheet. It has three columns and no functions. The boss has me print it out for him every time I update it.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2026
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The place I work at literally has zero inventory management systems. The owner just walks into the place, looks around, orders whatever the fuck he wants, and leaves us to figure it out. This is a highly profitable business, somehow.
virgin ERP supported MBA supply calculations vs. chad just go off of vibes
and I mean this unironically, the numbers will never tell you about the upcoming uptick of people needing U-Pipes. Used to be businessmen prided themselves on that skill
You'd think that but I recently estimated we have like 10% of our yearly revenue in unsold stock in one department alone, and the business struggles to pay wages and creditors.
It's profitable, but it barely stays afloat. The best businesses have the intuition + the numbers to back that up.
My company manages their inventory on an Excel spreadsheet.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it imo. Google literally does almost everything through spreadsheets lol.
Not that there aren't better systems out there.
My company relied heavily on a bunch of random excel spreadsheets until recently. Management created an initiative to bring all these tools under one roof that could be managed by IT. Specifically, they were using AI to vibe code simple little programs that would do the job of what the excel files used to do.
So anyone wishing their business didn’t run everything off Excel sheets, get ready for that monkey’s paw to curl
From my job I know about a fairly large company that is part of a major corporation and has lots of customers. They do have a digital customer management system but because a single person at their office, who has been there for decades, refuses to interact with anything but Excel, all views have to provide customised Excel exports.
The cost to switch is usually ~~lower~~ higher than just training people in the old system
Last one I worked for was obsessed with AI slop. I'd take og dos over that any day
Lol my retail company technically has upgraded to a "modern" OS and it has only made shit worse. Everything needs to run through head office's server which is like half the country away and it connects to our printers so we can't print if there's no connection. All our handhelds also check the inventory based off the head office central server. The only the remnant of old Tech is an old black screen text prompt interface used in the pricing index server that runs the cashier tils because obviously they want to be able to sell things even if the internet goes down. (Granted that usually means nobody can pay with debit or credit these days which is like 90% of transactions).