Clothing Store Inventory: Managing Sizes and Colors

Every clothing shop has lived this moment: a customer asks "do you still have the white shirt in L?", your notebook says 3 left, and you dig through every shelf and the sacks under the counter without finding a single one. Or the reverse — the book says sold out, and at the end of the season you find a full bag of size M nobody ever touched. Clothing is much harder to track than groceries, because one style is not one product — it is a dozen different products.

This article shows how to manage inventory in a clothing store with many sizes and colors, so the number in your book (or your software) matches what is on the shelf, and you know early which items are selling and which are tying up your cash.

Why notebooks and Excel break down with sizes and colors

Take one T-shirt style in 3 colors (black, white, grey) and 5 sizes (S, M, L, XL, XXL). To a customer, that is "one shirt". To your stockroom, it is 3 × 5 = 15 separate items, each with its own quantity. A shop with 40 styles like this is already tracking 600 stock lines.

Notebooks and spreadsheets usually fail in the same places:

• Lumping items together. The book says "Basic T-shirt: 45 pcs" without splitting by color and size. When a customer asks for grey XL, the book cannot answer.
• Forgetting to deduct. A busy hour at the counter, Facebook orders in the evening — every sale means opening the book and subtracting by hand. Miss a few and the numbers are wrong.
• Exchanges not recorded. A customer swaps an M for an L: stock should go up by one M and down by one L. Most shops that keep a notebook skip this step.
• Everyone writes it differently. "Grey", "gray" and "charcoal" for the same color become three separate lines.

After a few months nobody trusts the book anymore, and the only way to know whether something is in stock is to go and search the shelves.

Step 1: Every color + size gets its own SKU

A SKU is a short, unique code for each variant — each combination of style + color + size. A simple, readable pattern:

[Style code]-[Color]-[Size]

A few rules that keep codes clean later on:

• Fix the color codes in one shared list (BLK, WHT, GRY, DBL…) and have the whole shop use exactly that list.
• No accents or Khmer script in SKUs — they are easy to mistype and hard to print on barcode labels.
• Never reuse the code of a discontinued style for a new one.
• If stock arrives with the manufacturer's barcode, still give it your own SKU and save the barcode alongside it — scanning at the counter stays fast, and the SKU tells you at a glance what the item is.

Step 2: Buy by size ratio, not equal quantities

Many shops order the same quantity of every size, then end the season holding piles of S and XXL. In reality, each shop has a fairly stable size ratio in what it sells. For example, a women's clothing shop in Phnom Penh reviews three months of sales and finds S : M : L : XL is roughly 1 : 3 : 4 : 2.

When ordering 30 pieces of a new style, split them by that ratio:

This ratio comes from real sales per variant, not gut feeling — which is why step 1 (a separate SKU for each size) matters: if you don't split sizes, you will never know which ones sell.

Step 3: Count stock regularly — a section at a time

Counting the whole shop at once is exhausting, so it keeps getting postponed. A routine that is easier to keep is a cycle count:

• Count 1–2 product groups each week (T-shirts this week, jeans next week…).
• Count during quiet hours, SKU by SKU, and write down the actual number.
• Compare with the system. For example, the system says AT01-BLK-M has 12, you count 10 → 2 pieces missing.
• Record a reason for every difference: damaged, soiled in the fitting room, miscounted when receiving, or unknown.

Being off by a piece or two now and then is normal. But if every count comes up short, and the shortages cluster around expensive items or a particular shift, that is a sign of shrinkage — see Preventing cash loss at the counter to tighten your shift routine.

Step 4: Spot slow stock and broken size runs

Clothing has seasons and trends. A jacket sitting on the rack for three months doesn't just take up space — it locks up cash. For example, 25 jackets at a cost of 6 USD each sitting for 90 days is 25 × 6 = 150 USD of capital that isn't working — enough to restock a style that is selling well.

Check two lists every month:

1. Slow stock — styles bought a while ago that have barely sold. An easy measure is sell-through: bought 30, sold 18 after 4 weeks → 18 / 30 = 60%. If a style has sold under roughly 30% after 4–6 weeks, consider marking it down early instead of waiting for the end of the season.
2. Broken size runs — styles with only 1–2 edge sizes left (S, XXL). Customers looking for that style usually don't fit the remaining sizes, so group them on one rack or in one "last sizes on sale" post.

An early markdown usually still makes money: a shirt costing 6 USD that sells for 15 USD, marked down 30% to 10.50 USD, still earns 4.50 USD per piece — far better than waiting until year end and clearing it below cost.

Fast sellers need watching too: set yourself a minimum level for each popular size (e.g. reorder when size M drops below 3) so you don't lose customers because your most common size ran out.

Step 5: Size exchanges must go through the system

Size exchanges happen every day in a clothing shop, and they are where stock counts go wrong most often. The rule is simple: every exchange is a return plus a new sale.

• Customer returns an M → record a return, the M goes back into stock.
• Customer takes an L → record a sale of the L, stock goes down by one L.
• If they switch to a style at a different price, the difference is collected or refunded clearly, so it matches the cash in the drawer at the end of the shift.

Check returned items before putting them back: tags still on, clean, undamaged. Faulty items don't go back on the rack — record them separately as damaged during your next count.

Clothing inventory in LeangPos

In LeangPos, each product has multiple variants (e.g. "Black / M"), and each variant has its own SKU, barcode, cost price, selling price and stock — exactly the style + color + size model above. At the counter, staff type the SKU or scan the barcode to get the right variant; every sale, including orders from the shop's website, deducts stock from that branch automatically. See Managing products.

When you count stock, the Viewing stock & making adjustments page lets you enter the quantity you actually counted along with a reason; the system calculates the difference and keeps it in each SKU's stock history. Size exchanges go through Cancelling orders & processing returns followed by a new sale, so both stock and shift cash stay in line. The Dashboard shows a list of low-stock products so you know which sizes to reorder.

Summary

• Every style + color + size is its own SKU, named by one fixed rule for the whole shop.
• Buy by your real size ratio, not equal quantities.
• Run cycle counts — one product group per week — and record a reason for every difference.
• Review slow stock and broken size runs monthly to mark down early, and set minimum levels for fast-selling sizes.
• Exchange = return + new sale, always through the system.

If you want to track stock by size and color without keeping a notebook, you can try LeangPos for free.