Xero Inventory Alternative UK — MTD VAT & AI | HelloBooks The Xero alternative for UK inventory — MTD VAT submissions, 20%/5%/0% rate handling, postponed-VAT accounting on imports, CIS-aware contractor purchases, AI bookkeeping. Free Plan, no £15-£30/mo entry tier.
HelloBooks Inventory is the Xero alternative for UK inventory — built for the SMEs that don't want to pay £15-£30/month before they've added a single SKU. Items, variants, bill of materials, stock adjustments, transfers and movements all post in real time to inventory valuation and the right nominal account inside the same ledger that runs your invoices, supplier bills, Making Tax Digital VAT submissions, CIS deductions and HMRC reconciliation. The free plan covers the full stock surface; the £9.99/month Pro tier adds AI bookkeeping, IR35 vendor scorecards and postponed-VAT accounting on imports. One-click migration from Sage 50, FreeAgent, Xero UK or Unleashed — the entire stock ledger arrives, not just opening balances.
UK-specific compliance is built in: VAT rate handling at 20%/5%/0% per line, postponed-VAT accounting on imports, OSS/IOSS treatment for EU-bound stock, CIS reverse-charge on inward stock to construction sub-contractors, and IR35-aware contractor purchase orders for freelance ops. AI demand forecasting uses 12-month sales history (factoring UK retail seasonality — pre-Christmas, Black Friday, Boxing Day) to surface reorder points, low-stock alerts and stale-stock provisions before they hit the P&L. The Cleanup Dashboard catches missing commodity codes, broken UOM conversions and stuck stock adjustments at the source.
What makes HelloBooks Inventory different from UK-focused inventory tools is the depth on every adjacent surface: vendor scorecards with CIS-verification status and IR35 readiness, purchase requests and POs that flow into Warehouse Receiving (GRN) with auto-VAT treatment, BOMs that roll into Manufacturing work orders for UK discrete + process manufacturing, and Plaid UK / TrueLayer open-banking feeds that close the loop on every supplier payment. Stock Ledger, Inventory Valuation (FIFO + weighted-average), Movement Log, Reorder Planning and Profitability Analysis ship in the same dashboard.
Inventory Management
Wired Into Your Ledger
Items, variants, BOM, stock ledger, valuation, reorder rules, vendor scorecards and AI forecasting — all posting to the same books that run your invoices, bills and GST. No integration glue.
Built for Stock-Heavy Businesses
Ecommerce, manufacturing, retail, wholesale, distribution — one platform.
Ecommerce / D2C
Manufacturers
Retailers & Multi-store
Wholesale & Distribution
Service + Inventory
Multi-warehouse Ops
Items, variants, attributes, units of measure
A single item master with variants, attributes, multiple units of measure, HSN/SAC codes, batch and serial numbers, and per-item costing methods. The same SKU drives invoicing, billing, manufacturing BOMs, warehouse picking and GST returns.
- Items + variants (size, colour, lot) with shared parent attributes
- Multiple UOMs per item with conversion factors and rounding
- HSN/SAC + tax classification at item level for clean GSTR-1
- Batch / serial tracking with expiry and recall workflows
Bill of materials, kitting, assemblies
Bill of materials at any depth — single-level or multi-level, with cost roll-up, scrap allowances and substitute components. Kitting and assembly transactions move components into finished goods automatically and post the inventory journal in one motion.
- Multi-level BOMs with cost roll-up and effective dating
- Substitute / alternate components for shortages
- Kitting and assembly transactions with auto journal posting
- BOM-driven reorder planning flows into Manufacturing work orders
Adjustments, transfers, movement log
Stock adjustments and transfers with full approval workflow, reason codes and location-scoped enforcement. Every movement lands in the Movement Log with actor, IP, request-id and the reconciliation effect on the books — no manual journal needed.
- Stock Adjustments with approval gates and reason codes
- Inter-warehouse / inter-bin Stock Transfer with auto e-way bill
- Movement Log captures every motion with full audit trail
- Physical Stocktake variance review feeds back into adjustments
Stock ledger, valuation, forecasting
Real reports, not dashboards-of-tiles: Stock Ledger by item / batch / location, Inventory Valuation with FIFO or weighted-average, AI-driven Demand Forecasting from 12-month sales history, Inventory Insights for stale-stock and low-stock, and Item Profitability Analysis tying each SKU to its margin.
- Stock Ledger drillable by item, batch, lot, location
- Inventory Valuation — FIFO + weighted-average with period locks
- Demand Forecasting from sales history with reorder recommendations
- Inventory Insights — stale-stock, low-stock, dead-stock alerts
Vendor scorecards, purchase requests, POs
Vendor master with full scorecards (on-time delivery, fill rate, defect rate), purchase requests with approval routing, POs that flow into Warehouse Receiving (GRN), and reorder rules that trigger draft POs on low-stock without manual intervention.
- Vendor master with scorecards: OTIF, fill rate, defects
- Purchase Request approval routing with budget checks
- Purchase Orders flow into Warehouse GRN — no double entry
- Reorder point rules auto-create draft POs on low stock
AI categorization, cleanup dashboard
AI categorization classifies stock purchases, freight inward and component spares to the right inventory and cost-centre buckets on the first pass. The Cleanup Dashboard catches missing HSN codes, broken UOM conversions, stuck adjustments and orphaned lots before they hit the P&L.
- AI categorization for raw material, freight, packing, spares
- Cleanup Dashboard — missing HSN, broken UOM, orphaned lots
- AI demand forecasting + reorder recommendations
- Chat-to-cleanup — fix issues by talking to the bookkeeping agent
Inventory Management FAQs
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