How to use inFlow Inventory: the first setup steps from the official guide

How to use inFlow Inventory: the five setup stages

You start using inFlow Inventory by working through five stages in its official getting started guide: set up the basics, add inventory, generate barcodes and SKUs, load costs and starting stock, then set prices and taxes. The guide estimates about one workday in total and says it goes fastest if your data is already in spreadsheets.

This page summarizes the vendor's documentation as read on 3 October 2026. Menu names can change between releases.

What you need before you start

• An account. A 14-day free trial needs no credit card. Paid plans start with Lite at $99 a month billed annually or $129 monthly, as read on 3 October 2026, with two team members and one location.
• An empty company. The trial opens with sample data. The guide says to choose Empty on the start screen before entering real records. Anything you added to the sample company is erased when you switch.
• An admin login. Settings, imports and team invitations need administrator rights.
• Spreadsheets. A product list with names, SKUs and costs, and a stock list with quantity by location.
• A costing decision. Ask your accountant which method to use before you import anything.

If your SKUs are inconsistent, fix them in the spreadsheet first. The SKU design guide shows a simple pattern.

Numbered steps from the getting started guide

1. Company details. Open Settings, then Global, then Company details. Add your logo, name and address. These print on invoices and quotes.
2. Costing option. In Global settings choose Costing options. Moving average is the default. FIFO, LIFO and manual costing are the alternatives.
3. Locations. Open Settings, then Inventory, then Locations. Rename Default location to the name of your building, not a room, so reordering works correctly. Add sublocations for aisles or bins if your plan allows.
4. Team. In Settings, then Team, select Invite member, enter an email and set access rights before sending.
5. Import products. Download the product import CSV template, fill it in, then go to Settings, Import, choose Product details, upload the file, check the data mapping and select Import. An email arrives when it finishes.
6. Barcodes and SKUs. In Inventory settings, use Generate under Barcode types to auto-generate internal barcodes, and Stock keeping units to auto-generate SKUs with a prefix and number.
7. Costs. If you did not map cost in step 5, import Product details again mapping only product name and cost.
8. Starting stock. Export a Stock levels file, fill in quantities, and import it. The required columns are product name, location and quantity.
9. Pricing schemes. In Settings, then Orders, then Pricing schemes, rename Normal price if you wish and add schemes such as wholesale.
10. Taxes. In Order settings open Taxing schemes, edit the default No tax entry and add the rates you charge.

Worked example: a 300-product wholesaler on Lite

A wholesaler has 300 products in one warehouse and two staff, which fits Lite's two team members and single location. The owner renames Default location to Main Warehouse, keeps moving average costing, and imports one CSV with 300 rows that includes name, SKU, category and cost. Barcodes are auto-generated because the products have none. A second file with three columns loads the opening quantities. Two pricing schemes are created, Retail and Wholesale, plus one sales tax scheme.

From that point the daily loop is short: raise a purchase order when a product hits its reorder point, receive it against the order, create sales orders, pick and fulfill them, and invoice.

A mistake to avoid: choosing costing after products are in

The guide says to choose the costing option before adding products. Changing it later makes inFlow recalculate the whole database, which the guide says can take minutes or several hours, and the account shows as under maintenance until it finishes. The change also requires typing a confirmation. If you later connect QuickBooks Online, the vendor says not to change the costing method at all.

Two smaller traps are worth avoiding. Enter real data in the sample company and you will lose it. And skip the cost column on import and your profit and inventory value reports start from zero.

After setup: what to do in the first week

• Print labels for one shelf and test scanning with a phone before labelling everything. The barcode plan covers the order to do it in.
• Set reorder points on your 20 fastest-moving products.
• Connect one sales channel or QuickBooks Online only after stock values are correct.
• Schedule a first cycle count to confirm the imported quantities.

inFlow Inventory suits teams willing to spend that first day on clean data. If you only need to scan supplies in and out with no orders or costing, inFlow Stockroom or Sortly has less to set up.