Fabric inventory management for tailors and small workshops

Stand in most stockrooms and ask how many metres of navy lining are left. You will get a look at the shelf and a guess. The guess is fine until a batch of 40 stops halfway because the roll ran out, or until the same fabric is bought twice.

Good fabric control comes down to a few habits, done every time. You can run them on paper, in a spreadsheet or in software. The routine is the same, and all figures below are examples.

Give every roll an identity

Stock by the fabric name alone will mislead you. Two rolls of "black crepe" from different dyeing runs may not match. Tag each roll when it arrives with:

• A roll number you assign yourself.
• Fabric name, colour and supplier.
• Dye lot, from the supplier's paperwork.
• Width and metres received.
• Date received and price per metre.
• Its shelf location.

Keep dye lots apart on the shelf, and do not mix them inside a garment. Factories go further. They compare swatches from every roll and sort them by shade. For a small order, a look at both roll ends side by side in daylight catches most problems.

Check what actually arrived

The length on a label is the supplier's claim. A fabric store in a factory checks rolls against the packing list, confirming width and length, and keeps the result in a log book. A small workshop can measure a roll when it goes across the table, or at least any roll that feels short.

While the roll is open, look for holes, stains and a width narrower than ordered. Test shrinkage on a measured piece of any new fabric, since factories add it to the patterns before cutting. Note any fault on the delivery and tell the supplier straight away. Rejected metres should never enter your stock count.

Use the oldest stock first

First in, first out means the oldest stock is used first, with newer deliveries waiting behind it. Date the rolls, and put the older ones where they are easiest to reach. Fabric does not spoil the way food does, but it does fade along the fold, gather dust and go out of fashion. Bear dye lots in mind too. If a job needs one continuous shade, take the single lot with enough metres, even when an older lot sits nearby.

Issue fabric to a job, then take back the rest

This is the step that makes everything else work. Nothing leaves the shelf without a job name beside it. In factories, the cutting room raises a requisition, collects against it, and returns the excess after the order. For a small workshop, a line in a book will do: date, roll, job, metres out, metres back, who took it.

Taking back the rest matters as much as issuing. Otherwise your records show 64 metres used on a job that used 61.4.

Work out where the fabric went

After each cut, compare the plan with what happened.

Example: 40 shirts at a planned 1.5 metres each need 60 metres. The store issues 64.

Line	Metres
Issued	64.0
Returned to the shelf	2.6
Used	61.4
Planned	60.0
Over plan	1.4

At 8 a metre, 1.4 metres is 11.20 on this batch. A small sum once, but repeated on every batch it adds up. Now give it a reason. Of the 1.4 metres, say 0.7 was a cutting error and 0.7 was a flaw cut around. The first is a training matter. The second may be a supplier claim.

Keep the list of reasons short, such as cutting error, stain, fabric flaw and supplier shortage. Long lists stop being used. Be fair about what counts as a loss too. Some end bits are normal: one factory article puts them at "about 2%" and suggests matching rolls to markers to bring them down. Measure your own figure and work on that.

Decide as well what to do with offcuts. Pieces large enough for facings, pockets or samples go in a labelled bin with their metres noted. Anything smaller is waste and leaves the count.

Set reorder points by the metre

A reorder point is the stock level at which you buy more. The usual formula has two parts: lead time demand plus safety stock.

• Lead time demand = average daily use × average lead time.
• Safety stock = (highest daily use × longest lead time) minus lead time demand.

Example: you use an average of 5 metres of a uniform fabric a day, and the supplier normally delivers in 10 days. Lead time demand is 50 metres. On a heavy day you use 8 metres, and the slowest delivery took 14 days. That is 112 metres, so safety stock is 112 minus 50, or 62. Reorder at 50 plus 62, which is 112 metres.

That level suits a core fabric used every week. It makes no sense for a one-season print. Set reorder points for your repeat fabrics, and buy fashion fabric against orders. If your supplier sells by the roll, round up to whole rolls.

Keep purchase orders and goods received together

A purchase order records what you asked for, at what price and by when. When goods arrive, write down what was received and what was rejected against that order. Part-deliveries then stay visible, and you will pay for what you accepted. Even a numbered carbon book beats phone calls nobody remembers.

Count on a schedule

Records drift, however careful you are. Pick a few fabrics each week and measure or weigh them against the book, so the whole stockroom is covered over a season. Any gap needs a reason before you correct it. A missing issue slip is a training point. A repeated gap on one fabric needs a closer look.

What to do first

Start with your ten most-used fabrics. Tag the rolls, start the issue book and run it for a month. You will learn more from those ten than from a full stocktake that nobody keeps up. Your per-piece costing will improve as well, as our guide to calculating garment cost explains.

If the book gets too much, this is the kind of work Tailoq was built to carry. You can issue and return materials against each job, and it blocks an issue below zero, warns at the reorder level and shows wastage by reason. Purchase orders can be drafted from items below reorder level, and goods received records rejected lines.