INV3NTORY vs Sortly
Sortly is a genuinely good product — a visual, folder-based inventory app that’s popular with contractors, warehouses, offices, and anyone who needs to know what they own and where it is. Photos, QR labels, check-in/check-out: for asset tracking, it’s hard to beat.
But tracking what you own and running a shop that sells things every few minutes are different jobs. The core question is simple: does your stock count update itself when your till rings a sale? Here’s the honest side-by-side for a UK retail shop.
| Sortly | INV3NTORY | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Tracking items & assets — any industry | UK retail shops with a till |
| Stock updates automatically when something sells | No till integration — quantities are updated manually or by scan | Yes — syncs with Square, Zettle, Lightspeed & EPOS Now |
| Low-stock alerts | Yes | Yes — based on live till sales |
| Margin & profit per product | Not its focus — it tracks quantity and value | Built in: live margins, category profit, dead stock |
| Waste & shrinkage tracking | Not built in | Built in, with reports |
| Photo-based visual organisation | Excellent — a core strength | Basic — products are organised by category and barcode |
| Check-in/check-out for tools & equipment | Yes — a core strength | No — not what it’s for |
| Pricing currency & market | Priced in USD, global | Priced in GBP for UK shops, VAT-aware |
Where Sortly genuinely wins
If your problem is "what do we own, where is it, and who has it" — a van full of tools, a stockroom of equipment, office assets across sites — Sortly’s visual folders, photos, and QR labels are excellent, and INV3NTORY would be the wrong tool. Sortly also has a free tier for very small item counts, which is a fair way to start.
Where a shop outgrows it
A shop’s stock changes hundreds of times a day, one till beep at a time. Any system that relies on a person updating quantities falls behind by lunchtime — not because the app is bad, but because nobody scans an item out while a queue is forming. INV3NTORY listens to the till instead: when a sale goes through Square, Zettle, Lightspeed, or EPOS Now, the count moves by itself.
The second difference is money. A shop doesn’t just need quantities; it needs to know which lines earn their shelf space, what waste cost this month, and which best seller will run out by Friday. That margin-and-movement layer is INV3NTORY’s whole job.
Switching from Sortly
Export your items from Sortly as CSV and import them into INV3NTORY in minutes — names, barcodes, quantities, and prices come across. Connect your till once and the manual updating ends that day. And if you leave, your data exports right back out to CSV; no lock-in either way.
Common questions
Is INV3NTORY a Sortly alternative for shops?
For a retail shop with a till, yes — that’s exactly the use case it’s built for. For asset and equipment tracking without sales, Sortly is likely the better fit.
Can I import my Sortly data?
Yes. Export your item list from Sortly as CSV and import it directly — product names, barcodes, quantities, and prices come across in one go.
Does INV3NTORY have photos like Sortly?
Products are organised by name, category, and barcode rather than photo folders. In a shop, the barcode is the photo — scanning with your phone camera identifies any product instantly.