Search for "inventory app" and you'll get hundreds of results that all claim to do the same thing. Most of them were built for one of two customers: a retail store counting what's on the shelf, or a large company with an operations team and an implementation budget. A small wholesale business is neither. You sell the same products to the same business customers every week, often at prices you negotiated one account at a time, and the people moving stock are usually on the floor rather than at a desk.
This checklist is the one we wish every small distributor, roaster, producer, or supplier had before they signed up for anything, including us.
1. Does it work fully on the phone your team already carries?
Ask for a demo on an iPhone, not a laptop. A lot of inventory software has a "mobile app" that only does lookups and counts, and sends you back to a browser for orders, pricing, or anything involving money. If your team receives stock, picks orders, and talks to customers from the floor or the truck, the phone app has to be the whole product, not a companion to it.
2. Can you scan barcodes with the camera?
Manual entry is where stock counts start to drift. A good app lets you receive, count, and adjust stock by scanning with the phone's camera, with no separate scanner hardware required to get started, and records every movement so you can see who changed what and when.
3. Does each customer get their own price automatically?
This is the question that rules out most retail-first tools. If your coffee shop accounts pay one rate and your grocery accounts pay another, the price should live on the customer record and fill in on every order. If the answer is "you can edit the price on each order," that's not customer pricing; that's re-typing. (We wrote a whole guide on customer-specific pricing.)
4. Is there a real order pipeline?
Wholesale orders aren't a checkout. They get drafted, confirmed, packed, shipped, and completed, sometimes over several days, and stock should move at the right step instead of all at once. Look for clear order statuses your whole team can see, so "did that order go out?" stops being a phone call.
5. Can you control who sees what?
The person packing boxes doesn't need to see your margins. The manager building orders does need to see each customer's price. Owner, manager, and employee roles sound like a small detail until you're deciding whether to hand a new hire your whole financial picture on day one.
6. What does it really cost for your whole team?
Per-user pricing adds up fast once you add a warehouse helper, a driver, and a part-time bookkeeper. So do paid add-ons for scanning, extra order statuses, or onboarding help. Before you compare monthly prices, multiply by the number of people who will actually use it, and add the modules you'll need within a year.
7. Can you be running the same day?
If setup requires a consultant or a multi-week implementation, the software was built for a bigger company. A small wholesale business should be able to add products, invite the team, and take a real order the same afternoon.
8. Does it show you whether you're making money?
Inventory and orders are only half the picture. Knowing who owes you money, what you spent, and what you actually earned last month usually means a second or third tool. Having receivables and expenses alongside your stock saves a lot of copying numbers between systems.
Where Stowed fits
Stowed Business was built around this list: a native iPhone app with camera barcode scanning, customer-specific pricing, a placed-to-shipped order pipeline, and owner, manager, and employee roles, with one subscription for your whole team instead of per-seat fees. It's free to start (up to 50 products on the Free plan), and finance tools like receivables, expenses, and payroll come with the Growth plan.
See how Stowed checks every box. Start on the Free plan, or get your first month free on any paid plan.
Download Stowed Business freeFAQ
For businesses that sell to repeat B2B customers, customer-specific pricing and a real order pipeline matter most, because they are what generic retail inventory apps usually lack.
No. Modern inventory apps like Stowed scan barcodes and QR codes with the iPhone camera, so you can start without buying separate scanner hardware.
Stowed Business has a Free plan that covers up to 50 products, 1 location, and 2 team members. Paid plans add more products, team members, and finance tools.
Related: Barcode inventory from an iPhone · B2B order management for small distributors