Most shop owners I talk to about stocktakes have the same worry, and it isn’t the counting.
It’s “what if I press the wrong button and wreck my live stock?”
So they put it off. Last year’s spreadsheet sits in Downloads. The stockroom drifts. Then a customer orders the last candle in a scent that hasn’t actually been on the shelf since August.
What I tell them is simple. Don’t plan the big count yet. Give me 20 minutes and one shelf. Install the plugin, count a handful of products, and do your first safe stock update. Once you’ve seen it work end to end on ten products, the whole-shop count stops feeling like a leap in the dark.
This is that walkthrough: your first WooCommerce stocktake, from WordPress.org install to the first safe Update stock.
Be honest about the 20 minutes
Twenty minutes is for a first run: plugin installed, one shelf or one box of products, somewhere between five and fifteen SKUs.
It is not 20 minutes to count a warehouse. A full stocktake takes as long as the walking and counting take. What the plugin removes is the admin side — the spreadsheet, the retyping, the afternoon in wp-admin.
Before you start, check two things in WooCommerce:
- The products you’ll count have Manage stock turned on (simple products, or the individual variations).
- Permalinks are set to anything except Plain (Settings → Permalinks).
On a live site you also want HTTPS. You almost certainly have it already.
Minutes 0–3: install from WordPress.org
In wp-admin, go to Plugins → Add New, search for “Inventory Check for WooCommerce”, install and activate. Or grab it from the WordPress.org plugin directory.
WooCommerce needs to be active first. That’s the setup. No account to create, no API key, no licence to paste in.
If /inventory-check/ gives you a 404 later, open Settings → Permalinks and click Save. That sorts it nearly every time.
Minutes 3–5: open the app on your phone
Inventory Check runs at https://YOUR-SITE/inventory-check/ — on your own site, outside wp-admin. There’s also an Inventory Check item in the admin sidebar that takes you there.
Open that address on your phone, logged in as an Administrator or Shop Manager. You’ll see three tabs: Count, Search and Status.
If you like, add it to your home screen (Share → Add to Home Screen in Safari on iPhone, or Install app in Chrome on Android). It’s optional. A normal browser tab is fine for a first run.
Minutes 5–6: start a stock check
On Count, give the check a name — something like “Shelf 3 test — 6 Oct” — and tap Start stock check.
Naming it matters more than you’d think. When you look back in three months, “Shelf 3 test” tells you exactly what that was.
Minutes 6–15: count a few products
Pick one shelf. Not the whole stockroom. One shelf, one bay, or one box of returns. If there’s a shelf where you already suspect a number is wrong, pick that one — it makes the review step more interesting.
Open Search. Choose Name or SKU and type enough to find the product. Tap it. You’ll see the expected WooCommerce stock for reference. Enter what’s actually in front of you, with the + and − buttons or by typing it, then tap Save count.
Do that for each product on the shelf. Anything you’ve already counted shows as Checked with the saved quantity, so you don’t count the same box of tea lights twice.
With variable products, count the variation — the medium navy T-shirt — not the parent product.
Barcodes are optional. If your products have them, tap Scan in Search and point the camera. If they don’t, and plenty of small shops never labelled every SKU, name and SKU search does the job. You don’t need a scanner, a label printer or a second app.
Save count doesn’t touch your live stock
This is the bit that makes nervous owners relax, so I’ll say it plainly.
Save count does not change WooCommerce. It stores the number you counted against this stock check. Your live product quantity stays exactly where it was, and customers keep buying from the same figures they saw this morning.
You can save, change your mind, recount and save again. None of it reaches the shop.
There is one button that writes to live WooCommerce stock. We’ll get to it in a minute.
Minutes 15–18: review the differences
Back on Count, tap Review differences. There are three filters:
- Differences — lines where what you counted isn’t what WooCommerce expected
- All counted — everything you’ve saved
- Conflicts — lines that aren’t safe to write
On a ten-product first run you’ll probably see one or two differences. That’s the point of doing it. Look at each one. If something seems off, tap Keep counting, go back to the shelf, recount and save again. Still nothing written.
If an order lands for one of your products while you’re counting, that line shows as a conflict and won’t be written. I covered why in Just Overwrite the Stock. On a quick first run it’s unlikely, but it’s good to know it’s there.
Minutes 18–20: Update stock
Now the one button that writes.
Update stock is only shown to a supervisor, Shop Manager or Administrator. Tap it, read the confirmation, and confirm.
Ready lines are set to the physical count you saved. Conflicts are left alone. That is the only moment the plugin changes live WooCommerce quantity.
Afterwards, open one of those products in wp-admin and look at the stock figure. Seeing your counted number in there — entered from a phone, without touching the product edit screen — is usually when it clicks.
If you’ve got staff, you can later give them the Inventory Check Counter role so they count and review but never see Update stock. Counter on the Floor, Supervisor at the Desk covers that. For a first run, doing both jobs yourself is fine.
Afterwards: the record
The completed check appears in Inventory Check → History in wp-admin, with audit detail and a Download CSV button. It isn’t a reporting suite. It’s a record of what was counted and what changed, which is handy when your accountant asks at year end.
What you’ve actually proved
After 20 minutes you haven’t counted the shop. You’ve proved four things:
- The plugin runs on your site and on your phone.
- Saving counts is safe.
- Only Update stock writes, and only for someone with the right role.
- That first shelf is now right in WooCommerce.
That’s enough to plan the real count with some confidence: which aisles, which evening, who counts and who confirms.
What this is — and is not
Inventory Check is a stocktake tool, not a warehouse-management system. Counts and product data stay on your WordPress site. There’s no inventory cloud from me.
It’s also fully free. Name and SKU search, barcode scanning, offline counting, conflict detection, review, Update stock, History and CSV export are all in the plugin on WordPress.org.
Wrap Up
Don’t start with the whole warehouse. Start with one shelf.
Install from WordPress.org, open /inventory-check/ on your phone, start a check, count a few products, Save count, review, then Update stock. Twenty minutes, and the only write to your live stock is the one you confirm.
Docs and setup: Inventory Check for WooCommerce. Install from the WordPress.org plugin directory.
Need a hand?
If you’d rather I set it up and walk your first count with you, get in touch. Fixed-price quote, no obligation.
Written by Connie, an AI, from Neil Matthews’ notes, archive, and direction. Neil directed and edited this piece. He did not write these words. Augmented publishing by Neil Matthews.