What's in the template
This manufacturing inventory template tracks every item through three stages, raw materials bought from suppliers, work in progress (WIP) partially assembled and not yet sellable, and finished goods ready to ship, each in its own rows with a Stage column so you can filter or total by stage instead of mixing them into one undifferentiated stock number.
Open it in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers, delete the sample rows, and start entering your own raw materials, subassemblies, and finished products. Keep SKU prefixes distinct per stage (RM- for raw materials, WIP- for work in progress, FG- for finished goods in the sample data) so you can sort and filter by stage at a glance without relying on the Stage column alone.
Columns explained
| SKU | Unique identifier for the item, across every stage. Never reuse a retired SKU. |
| Item_Name | Human-readable name, used for lookups and work order references. |
| Stage | Raw Material, WIP, or Finished Good. Drives how the item should be valued and whether it is sellable. |
| Category | Groups items for filtering and reporting (metal stock, hardware, subassembly, furniture, etc.). |
| Unit | The counting unit: ea, kg, m, roll. Keep this consistent per SKU across every sheet you build. |
| Quantity_On_Hand | Current stock level for that item, at that stage. The column that goes stale fastest in a manual sheet. |
| Reorder_Point | The quantity that should trigger a new purchase order or production run. |
| Unit_Cost | Cost per unit at that stage. A WIP item's cost should reflect materials and labor added so far, not just its raw material cost. |
| Location | Where the item physically sits, rack, shelf, or a shop-floor station for WIP. |
| Supplier | Who to reorder from. Left blank for WIP and finished goods, which are built, not purchased. |
| Last_Updated | Date this row was last verified, by count or by production/receiving record. |
| Notes | Scrap allowance, cure or dry time, or anything else that affects usable quantity. |
How to track raw materials, WIP and finished goods in Excel
- Add one row per item and set its Stage: Raw Material, WIP, or Finished Good.
- Set a Reorder_Point per raw material: average daily usage × lead time in days + safety stock.
- When a work order starts, subtract the raw materials it consumes and add the same items as WIP.
- Value WIP at material cost so far plus the labor added; move the row to Finished Good when the unit is complete.
- Total by Stage (the Excel version does this for you) to see stock value split across the three stages.
Calculating producible units from raw material stock
This template on its own tells you what you have, not what you can build. To calculate the second, you need a bill of materials (BOM) that lists how much of each raw material one finished unit consumes. For each required raw material, divide its Quantity_On_Hand by the quantity needed per finished unit; the lowest result across every required material is your true maximum, since production stops the moment any single required material runs out, regardless of how much stock remains of everything else.
Example: a workbench needs 1 worktop, 4 feet, and 12 bolts. With 22 worktops, 340 feet, and 910 bolts on hand, that is 22, 85, and 75 possible units respectively, the worktop is the bottleneck at 22 units, even though the other two materials would support far more. See the bill of materials template to build this list, or how to create a bill of materials for the full process.
Where a manufacturing spreadsheet breaks down
A spreadsheet like this works fine for a small shop with one production line and one person updating it. It starts failing in three specific ways: raw material quantities do not decrement automatically when a work order consumes them, so a shortage is only discovered when someone physically goes looking for a part mid-build; WIP value has to be estimated and updated by hand as subassemblies move through stages; and nothing warns you before a production run starts that you do not actually have enough of a bottleneck material to finish it.
None of that is a reason to avoid a spreadsheet while you are small. It is a reason to know the specific trigger for switching: the moment a work order needs to automatically pull raw materials from stock, or more than one person on the shop floor needs to see current stock at the same time.
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