Inventory, in the units your floor uses.

A stock figure is only as good as the last time somebody updated it. If you are responsible for inventory, you know what that means in practice: a register, a shared spreadsheet, and a phone call when the two disagree.

At a textile finisher the factory ran entirely on paper. There was a register for arrivals, a notebook reconciling folded metres against the mill's metres, and a handwritten list of packed bales made up each month. Copies were carried to head office to be typed in. Part shipments from mills were reconciled by hand, so metres still owed could be forgotten. Stock available for packing was checked physically or from memory.

At a spares business, one person kept the shared register of goods received, and a part delivery became a dated note in a remarks cell. Goods sent straight from a vendor to a client left no record at all. At a manufacturer with many plants, head office has no current view of stock at any of them without calling.

Packaged inventory software holds an item, a quantity, a unit and a location. That covers what every warehouse has in common, and it is enough for boxed goods on shelves.

Your stock is rarely that simple. It changes unit halfway through the process. It is reserved for one customer's order and must not be sold to another. It is packed, then unpacked for a different buyer. It runs below zero on paper because production ran ahead of the receipt. A rented system answers each of these with a workaround field or a change request, and the queue for that request is not yours to order.

Inventory is also the figure every other function leans on. Purchasing, production and sales each trust it or keep their own copy. A capability that central is worth holding yourself: what gets built, and when, is your decision.

On Phlo, each receipt, movement, cut, pack, dispatch and correction is an event with a time and a person. The balance at any stage is what those events add up to. The chain beside the headline follows one lot of cloth from the mill's gate pass to the bale that left.

A correction is an event too. Nobody edits a quantity. Because the balance is derived from the history:

• Trace. Any figure opens into the receipts, movements and dispatches that produced it, down to a single sticker.
• Correct without overwriting. An adjustment or an undone dispatch is added to the record with its reason. What it corrected is still visible.
• Reports that draw on history. Stock by stage, yield by lot, and how long goods have waited come from the same events.

Inventory is often the first build because so much rests on it. Once receipts and dispatches are on record, a purchasing process can be added that reads what is short, or a production plan that reads what is ready. A second warehouse or plant uses the same items, units and roles. It extends without a migration: the new process sits on the history you already have.

After the first build the framework becomes available to you. Your own engineers and product people can build that next system on it, or we carry on building for you. Both stay open. The terms are settled in the first conversation, scoped to the engagement.

How the two stages workThe record that carries forward