Stock counts nobody fully trusted.
Meridian Trade Co. imports goods from three continents and distributes them across four warehouse locations to retail and trade customers. Before switching, stock levels lived in a shared spreadsheet that three different people updated whenever they remembered to, usually from memory rather than an actual count.
“We had stockouts we did not know about until a customer called. And overstock on lines we had forgotten we had even ordered.”Amir Mahmoud · CEO, Meridian Trade Co.
The business estimated its stock accuracy at “somewhere around 70%”, a number nobody could state with confidence, because nobody had a system that tracked it. The effect reached accounting: cost of goods sold was calculated once a month from the same spreadsheet, by hand, so gross margin was always a rough estimate and arrived weeks after the sales it was meant to explain.
One system, not three.
The company had looked at standalone inventory tools before, but every option created the same problem in a different shape: a dedicated inventory system with no real accounting connection, so COGS would still be calculated separately every month.
“We did not need a better inventory app. We needed inventory and accounting to be the same system.”Amir Mahmoud · CEO, Meridian Trade Co.
Live by the end of the week.
The existing product catalogue and supplier records were imported from a spreadsheet export, with no reformatting required. Opening stock counts were entered against each of the four warehouse locations during setup, and reorder points were configured per product based on historical order patterns.
The full migration, including a physical stock count to establish accurate opening balances, was complete within a single working day, with Encarmo's support team handling the data import directly.
Real-time stock across four warehouses, automated reorder alerts, and FIFO valuation matched to the company's import accounting requirements.
COGS posts automatically on every invoiced sale. Multi-currency support handles supplier payments in the currencies the company buys in.
A number everyone can finally agree on.
Within the first month, stock accuracy, now measured rather than estimated, reached 98%. Reorder alerts flag low stock before a customer notices a gap, and the bookkeeper's monthly COGS calculation, previously a multi-hour manual exercise, no longer exists as a task because every sale posts it automatically.
“I used to brace myself before our monthly numbers review. Now I just open the dashboard. The margin figure is already right.”Finance lead, Meridian Trade Co.
“Reorder alerts changed how we plan purchasing. We are buying based on real data, not a gut feeling about what is probably running low.”Amir Mahmoud · CEO, Meridian Trade Co.
The company now plans to add the CRM module later this year, to bring live stock visibility into sales deal records so reps can see real availability before quoting.