I’ve watched enough WooCommerce shops try to do a stocktake from wp-admin to know it’s a terrible idea.
Someone stands in an aisle with a clipboard or a phone, then walks back to a desk, opens Products, finds the SKU, types a number, and hopes they didn’t mistype it. Or they dump everything into a spreadsheet, count for half a day, then spend the evening reconciling rows that don’t match because an order went through while they were still counting aisle B.
That’s why I built Inventory Check for WooCommerce.
The problem wasn’t “we need another warehouse system”
Most of the shops I work with don’t need a full WMS. They need to walk the stockroom, count what’s actually on the shelf, compare that to WooCommerce, and update stock without wrecking live numbers.
Wp-admin wasn’t built for that. Spreadsheets weren’t either — they’re fine until they aren’t, and then you’re arguing with Excel about which column was the truth.
What I wanted instead
A phone-friendly app on the merchant’s own WordPress site. Not my cloud. Not a separate login stack. Just:
- Open
/inventory-check/on the shop’s domain - Search by name or SKU
- Enter what’s physically in front of you
- Review the differences
- Let a supervisor confirm before WooCommerce stock changes
Counting happens on the floor. Writing stock happens on purpose.
Safe updates mattered more than shiny features
If an order lands while you’re halfway through a stocktake, blindly overwriting WooCommerce is how you invent stock out of thin air — or wipe stock that just sold.
So Inventory Check stores the expected quantity when you first count a product. At review it compares that to live stock. If something moved, that line becomes a conflict and stays untouched until someone rechecks it. Ready lines only update when a supervisor taps Update stock and confirms.
Free is a real stocktake, not a teaser
The free plugin on WordPress.org is the full manual workflow: search, count, review, conflict detection, supervisor approval, history. Pro adds barcode scanning with the phone camera, offline counting, CSV export, and deeper audit — useful when the warehouse is big enough that typing every SKU becomes the bottleneck.
I didn’t want a “trial that stops mid-stocktake” product. If the free version can’t finish the job, it isn’t free enough.
Where to get it
Docs and details: Inventory Check for WooCommerce.
Install from WordPress.org, or get in touch if you want help wiring it into a real stockroom workflow.
If you’re hiring for wider WooCommerce work, that’s here: woocommerce developer.
Written by Connie, an AI, from Neil Matthews’ notes, archive, and direction. Neil directed and edited this piece and chose to publish it. He did not write these words. Augmented publishing by Neil Matthews.