Do most small businesses use AI for inventory management yet?

No. According to a 2026 inFlow Inventory survey, only about 11% of inventory operators report using AI tools, even though 81% said they want them. The gap suggests cost, complexity, and mismatch with how small operators actually run stock are bigger barriers than lack of interest.

Is Netstock's 29% growth figure proof that AI inventory tools are mainstream?

Not on its own. That figure describes one vendor's year-over-year business growth and its own commissioned research about its customer base. It's a real data point but not an independent, industry-wide measurement of AI adoption across all small businesses.

What does the Fishbowl-Repfabric acquisition tell small shop owners?

Mainly that inventory software vendors are increasingly bundling stock management with adjacent functions like CRM and sales commission tracking. The announcement itself is about a product integration aimed at manufacturers and distributors, not evidence of a broader shift among small independent retailers.

What actually fixes the 'stale spreadsheet' problem for a small shop?

Most of the friction reported in these surveys comes from data going out of date between manual updates. A point-of-sale system that automatically adjusts stock counts at the moment of sale — and keeps working without a constant internet connection — addresses that gap directly, independent of whether it includes AI-driven forecasting features.

AI, Spreadsheets, and the Inventory Gap: What SMB Data Actually Shows Small Shops

Q: Are spreadsheets still common for tracking stock?

Yes. The same inFlow survey found 84.8% of respondents still use spreadsheets as their primary inventory tool, despite widespread interest in more automated options.

TL;DRNew industry surveys show a widening gap between demand for AI-driven inventory tools and actual use: most small businesses still run stock counts on spreadsheets, even as vendors report growing adoption and consolidation in the software market. We build Pultrack, a POS for small shops, so we read these numbers carefully — and separate what's independently verified from what's vendor marketing.

We build Pultrack, a point-of-sale and inventory app for small retailers, so every few months a fresh batch of "state of inventory management" surveys lands in our feed. This time it's worth pausing on the numbers, because they tell an interesting, slightly contradictory story: vendors are reporting strong growth and rising AI adoption, while independent-ish surveys of actual shop operators say most people are still counting stock the old-fashioned way.

What did the new inventory management data actually say?

Netstock, a supply-chain planning vendor, announced it grew 29% year-over-year in 2025 and said its own research found AI adoption among the small and mid-sized businesses it surveyed had risen, with a large share planning further AI investment in 2026.[1] That's a vendor reporting on its own customer base and its own commissioned research — useful as a data point, but not the same as an independent, industry-wide census of how all small retailers manage stock.

A separate survey from inFlow Inventory, a different inventory software vendor, ran its own 2026 poll of self-reported respondents and found that 84.8% still use spreadsheets as their primary inventory tool.[2] The same inFlow research is also the basis for reporting, picked up via a wire item on iltempo.it, that 81% of "inventory operators" want AI tools but only 11% are currently using one.[3] It's important to be precise here: [2] and [3] both trace back to the same inFlow survey rather than being two separately corroborating studies — one is inFlow's own blog write-up, the other is a syndicated news brief summarizing the same data. Treat it as one data source reported twice, not two independent confirmations.

Put those two vendor narratives side by side and you get a real tension: Netstock's release emphasizes accelerating AI uptake among the businesses it surveyed, while inFlow's numbers suggest that across a broader sample, spreadsheets are still the dominant tool and actual AI usage remains in the low double digits. Both can be true at once — AI adoption can be growing quickly in percentage terms from a small base while still representing a small minority of total usage.

Is inventory software consolidating around bigger platforms?

Separately from the AI-adoption debate, there's been continued M&A activity in inventory software. Fishbowl Inventory announced it acquired Repfabric, combining inventory management with sales, commission tracking, and CRM features aimed at manufacturers and distributors.[4] The announcement itself is straightforward: it describes a product integration, not a market-wide shift in buyer behavior. We won't speculate here about which "segment" of business this serves best — the source documents the deal, not a strategic thesis about who buys what.

What this does confirm is a pattern that's visible across the vendor landscape more broadly: point solutions for inventory are increasingly being bundled with adjacent functions — CRM, commissions, planning — rather than sold as standalone stock-counting tools. Whether that bundling trend reaches down-market to small independent retailers, or stays concentrated among manufacturers and distributors with dedicated sales teams, isn't something the acquisition announcement tells us either way.

Why does the AI-adoption gap matter for a small shop owner?

If you run a single storefront — a pharmacy, a hardware shop, a small grocery — the headline growth numbers from any one vendor matter less than the underlying gap they reveal: most small operators still track stock manually, want better tools, but haven't adopted AI-driven forecasting. That gap has a few likely, mundane explanations that don't require any AI hype at all:

Spreadsheets are free (or already paid for) and familiar, even when they're slow and error-prone.
Automated forecasting tools are usually built and priced for businesses with steady catalogs and predictable demand — not shops juggling irregular supplier deliveries or informal cash-based purchasing.
"AI inventory" as marketed by larger platforms often assumes constant connectivity and centralized data feeds, which doesn't match how many small retailers actually operate day to day.

None of this means AI forecasting is useless for small shops — it means the reported 11% adoption figure in the inFlow data[3] probably reflects real friction: cost, complexity, and mismatch with how small operators actually track goods, rather than simple reluctance to try new tools.

What should this mean for how small shops track stock day to day?

Setting aside which vendor's growth number is more impressive, the practical question for a shop owner is simpler: does your current system tell you, accurately and in real time, what you have on hand and what's about to run out? That's the baseline that spreadsheets often fail at — not because spreadsheets are inherently bad, but because they depend on someone remembering to update them after every sale, delivery, or spoilage write-off.

This is where basic point-of-sale-linked inventory tracking earns its keep, independent of whether it has an "AI" label attached. A POS that automatically decrements stock at the moment of sale, and that keeps working when the internet connection drops, solves a large share of the problem that spreadsheet-dependent shops report: the data goes stale between manual counts. We designed Pultrack around that offline-first, dual-currency reality specifically because many of the small shops we talked to were juggling multiple currencies and unreliable connectivity, not because we think every shop needs a forecasting algorithm. We're disclosing that directly: this paragraph is our own product perspective, not a claim drawn from any of the cited research.

The honest takeaway from this round of industry data is that most of it comes from vendors describing their own growth or their own commissioned surveys — useful signals, but not neutral third-party research. Read the percentages with that in mind: a 29% revenue growth figure[1] tells you about one company's business, and a spreadsheet-usage statistic[2][3] tells you about self-reported habits in one survey sample. Neither is a definitive industry census, but together they suggest small business inventory management is still, for the large majority, a manual and somewhat improvised process — with demand for better tools clearly outpacing actual adoption.