Google Sheets Inventory Template (Free): Columns, Formulas & How to Automate It

A good Google Sheets inventory template is one sheet with a row per product and a handful of columns — SKU, item name, quantity on hand, reorder point, unit cost, stock value, supplier, and last updated — held together by three formulas: stock value (quantity × unit cost), a reorder flag that prints REORDER when you're low, and a total-value sum. You can build one for free in about ten minutes, and you don't need to download anyone's file to do it. This post gives you the exact columns and the copy-able formulas, then shows how to turn that static sheet into one that emails you what to reorder — without paying monthly for inventory software.

Google's template gallery has basic tracker layouts (File → New → From template gallery), and there are plenty of free downloads online. They all work. But rolling your own means you understand every cell, you control the columns, and — the part no download gives you — you can automate it later. Let's build the template first, properly, then talk about when it's worth making it do the work for you.

What your inventory template needs — the exact columns

An inventory tracker only earns its keep if it answers two questions instantly: how much of each thing do I have, and what do I need to reorder now. These columns cover both. One row per SKU.

Column	Example	What it's for
SKU	TSHIRT-BLK-M	Unique code per item — your key for everything else
Item name	"T-Shirt, Black, M"	Human-readable description
Quantity on hand	42	Current stock — the number everything hinges on
Reorder point	20	The level at which you should reorder (see below)
Unit cost	6.50	What you pay per unit — drives stock value
Stock value	273.00	Formula: quantity × unit cost
Supplier	"Acme Textiles"	Who to order from — saves a lookup
Reorder?	REORDER	Formula flag — prints only when you're low
Last updated	2026-07-19	So you know how stale the count is

A few honest notes on the columns:

• SKU is non-negotiable past a handful of items. It's how a formula (or a script) finds a specific product without guessing from a name that might have typos.
• Reorder point is the quiet hero. A simple, defensible version: (average units sold per day × supplier lead time in days) + a small safety buffer. If you sell ~3/day and your supplier takes 7 days, set it around 25–30 so you reorder before you hit zero. Fast movers and slow suppliers get higher points.
• Unit cost lets the sheet total your inventory value — useful for insurance, financing, and knowing how much cash is sitting on your shelves.

Format the money columns as currency (Format → Number → Currency), freeze the header row (View → Freeze → 1 row), and turn the top row into a filter (Data → Create a filter) so you can sort by "Reorder?" in one click. That's a complete, professional stock tracker.

The formulas cheat-sheet (copy these)

This is the entire math of a tracker — three formulas. Assume your data starts in row 2, with Quantity on hand in column C, Reorder point in column D, Unit cost in column E, and Stock value in column F.

What	Cell	Formula	Why
Stock value	F2	=C2*E2	Quantity × unit cost, per row. Fill down the column.
Reorder flag	H2	=IF(C2<=D2,"REORDER","")	Prints REORDER only when on-hand is at or below the reorder point.
Total inventory value	a summary cell (e.g. F1002)	=SUM(F2:F1000)	Total cash tied up in stock. Put it below the data, not in the header row.

Two upgrades that save real headaches:

• Make the flag impossible to miss. With the Reorder? formula in place, add conditional formatting: select column H, Format → Conditional formatting, "Text is exactly" REORDER, fill red. Now low items light up the moment stock drops — no scanning required.
• Auto-stamp the last-updated date. Google Sheets has no native "changed on" per row, but a small Apps Script onEdit trigger can write today's date to the "Last updated" cell whenever a row's quantity changes — so you always know how fresh the count is. (Same script pattern as the alert below.)

Prefer a movement log? (more accurate, no drift)

Editing a single "Quantity on hand" cell by hand is fine for a small catalog, but it drifts — someone forgets to update it, or two people edit at once. The sturdier method is a movement log: a second tab where every stock change is a dated row.

Give the Log tab columns for SKU, Date, In, Out, Note. Then on your main sheet, compute on-hand instead of typing it:

=SUMIF(Log!A:A, A2, Log!C:C) - SUMIF(Log!A:A, A2, Log!D:D)

That nets every stock-in against every stock-out for the SKU in A2 — the count can never silently drift, and you get a full audit trail of who moved what and when. It's a small step up in setup for a big step up in trust. If you want the full event-sourced version of this — multiple warehouses, lot tracking, and FIFO cost accounting — we've built it out in a pro multi-warehouse inventory system; this template is deliberately the simpler starting point.

At this point you have a genuinely useful, free inventory tracker. For a small catalog that one person maintains, stop here — it's honestly all you need.

Where the static template starts costing you

The template is free, but it isn't free of work. Someone has to open the sheet, keep the counts current, eyeball the REORDER column, and actually remember to look — every day, or stockouts slip through. And a shared sheet with several people editing invites the classic problem: two people update the same row, one overwrites the other, and the count is wrong by lunchtime.

A few dozen SKUs and one owner? No problem — the free sheet is the right tool. A few hundred SKUs, a team touching it, or products you genuinely can't afford to run out of? That's where the same job is worth building once and never babysitting again.

Here's the honest comparison:

	Static Sheets template	Apps Script automation
Cost	Free	One-time build (no monthly fee)
Low-stock alerts	You remember to check the sheet	Emailed to you automatically each morning
Stock count	Typed by hand, can drift	Netted from a movement log, never drifts
Multiple editors	Overwrite each other	Multi-user web app, safe concurrent edits
Reorder list	You filter and read it off	Generated and sent to you (or the supplier)
Audit trail	None, unless you log by hand	Every movement dated and attributed
Where it lives	Your Google account	Your Google account
Good for	A few dozen SKUs, one person	Hundreds of SKUs, a team, critical stock

Both options keep your data in your own Google Drive — no third party holding a copy of your stock levels. The difference is purely how much of the checking and chasing you do by hand.

Want stock levels, low-stock alerts, and reordering handled automatically — with no monthly inventory SaaS bill? That's exactly what we build: an inventory system inside your own Google account, owned outright, no per-item fee. See a working version in our StockTrack inventory tracking system, or get a custom stock system scoped for your catalog. Free feasibility review — we'll tell you honestly whether automation pays off at your SKU count or whether the free template above is genuinely all you need.

Automating it: the low-stock email alert

The single highest-value thing to automate is the alert — being told what to reorder instead of remembering to check. Here's the core of it. This is illustrative but uses real Apps Script APIs: a function that scans every row, collects the items at or below their reorder point, and emails you the list. Put it on a time-driven trigger and it runs itself.

// Scans the inventory sheet and emails a low-stock report.
function lowStockAlert() {
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet()
    .getSheetByName('Inventory');

  // Read all data rows (skip the header row).
  const rows = sheet.getDataRange().getValues().slice(1);

  // Column indexes (0-based): SKU=0, Item=1, Qty on hand=2,
  // Reorder point=3, Supplier=6. Adjust to match your columns.
  const low = rows.filter(r => Number(r[2]) <= Number(r[3]));

  if (low.length === 0) return;  // Nothing low — send nothing.

  // Build a readable list for the email body.
  const lines = low.map(r =>
    `• ${r[1]} (${r[0]}) — ${r[2]} on hand, reorder at ${r[3]} — ${r[6]}`
  ).join('\n');

  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to: 'you@yourbusiness.com',
    subject: `Low stock: ${low.length} item(s) need reordering`,
    body: `These items are at or below their reorder point:\n\n${lines}\n\n` +
          `— Sent automatically from your inventory sheet.`
  });
}

// Run this once by hand to schedule the daily alert.
function createDailyTrigger() {
  ScriptApp.newTrigger('lowStockAlert')
    .timeBased()
    .atHour(8)          // 8am in the script's timezone
    .everyDays(1)
    .create();
}

A few notes on how this actually behaves:

• You run createDailyTrigger once. After that, lowStockAlert fires every morning on its own — no one has to open the sheet. To change the schedule, edit the trigger (Apps Script editor → Triggers, the clock icon) rather than the code.
• MailApp vs GmailApp. MailApp.sendEmail is the simplest way to send and has a slightly higher daily quota; swap to GmailApp if you want to send from an alias or apply a Gmail label. For a personal reorder report, MailApp is the cleaner fit.
• It only emails when something's actually low. The early return means no daily "all good" noise — you only hear from it when there's something to do. That's what keeps people from tuning the alert out.
• This is the honest, simple version. A production-grade alert adds safety-stock math, per-supplier grouping, and de-duping so you're not pinged about the same item every day. We walk through that engineering in preventing stockouts with automated alerts — start here, graduate there.

The honest caveats

Automation isn't free of limits, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest:

• The 6-minute execution limit. A single Apps Script run stops at ~6 minutes. Scanning a few thousand rows for low stock is milliseconds, so this never bites for a normal alert. It only matters if you loop heavy work over a very large catalog — the fix is to process in chunks and resume with a trigger, which we cover in Apps Script's 6-minute limit and how to beat it.
• Email quotas. Sending mail from Apps Script is capped at ~100 recipients/day on a consumer Gmail account and ~1,500/day on Google Workspace. One daily report to yourself is nowhere near that — worth knowing only if you also route supplier orders and customer notices through the same account.
• It's a build, not a download. The static template is copy-paste-and-go. The alert is a one-time setup — either you paste and schedule the script yourself, or someone builds it for you. That's the trade-off you weigh against every stockout the manual sheet would have missed.

For most small retailers and workshops, the crossover is real: somewhere past 100–200 SKUs, or the moment a stockout costs you a real sale, a one-time automation is cheaper than both the daily manual checking and a recurring inventory subscription. This is the same principle we apply across the board in replacing rented SaaS with tools you own in Google Workspace — you rarely need to pay monthly, forever, for a job your Google account can already do. And when several people need to edit stock at once without stepping on each other, that's the signal to turn it into a multi-user web app.

Start free, automate when it hurts

Build the template first. Use the columns and formulas above — they'll give you a clean, professional stock tracker today, at zero cost, that you fully understand and control. Add the reorder flag, log your movements if accuracy matters, and for a small catalog, genuinely stop there.

When the counting starts drifting, when you're opening the sheet every morning just to catch low stock, or when a team needs to edit it at once — that's the signal to automate. The same sheet becomes a system that emails you what to reorder and tracks every movement — living in your Google account, costing nothing to run, and yours to keep. No monthly bill, no vendor lock-in, no developer on retainer.

If you're at that point, tell us how you track stock today and we'll do a free feasibility review — a straight answer on whether automating pays off at your SKU count, roughly what a one-time build would cost, and where the free template above is genuinely all you need. No obligation, and we'll say so if a static sheet is the smarter call. You can also see a working version in our StockTrack inventory tracking system.

Building the finances side too? Grab our free invoice template — same approach, same free-first philosophy, part of a small set of Google Sheets business templates you can own outright.