The war is still going on. Client meetings aren't happening. Teams are scattered. Projects that were in motion are now in a holding pattern with no clear end date.
That kind of silence, if you let it stay silence, will cost you. So I started building Stokka.
The third ask
The first time a small business owner came to me asking for inventory management software, I pointed them at what's available. There's a whole market out there — go look, something will fit.
They came back. Nothing fit. Too complex for a four-person operation, or missing something they actually needed, or priced like they were running a regional distribution chain when they were a small shop that just needed to know what's in stock.
The second time, same story. Different business, same conclusion.
The third time someone sat across from me with the same problem, I stopped pointing elsewhere. I opened a notebook and started writing requirements.
Three business owners across different industries — a retailer, a small wholesaler, a service company that also carries physical inventory. All running operations with a handful of people. All with no IT team, no dedicated accountant on-site, no patience for a 200-page user guide. And all of them underserved by exactly the same gap: the market either over-solves or under-solves, and right-sized custom development is priced out of reach for most of them.
That gap is real. It's worth building for.
What Stokka is
Stokka is inventory management software built for small businesses. Not the "small" that enterprise vendors use to mean 50 employees and a finance department. The actual small — a business run by three or four people who wear every hat and need software that stays out of the way.
The design rule I set from day one: no user manual.
If someone sits in front of Stokka for the first time and can't figure out what to do in a few minutes, I've failed — not them. Anyone who understands how their own business works should be able to use the software without being trained on the software. That sounds obvious. It's harder to build than it sounds.
What it does
The core of Stokka is straightforward: you buy things, you sell things, the system knows what you have. Here's how that plays out across the modules:
Buying and selling
Purchase orders bring stock in. Receive a PO, inventory goes up automatically. Sales invoices push stock out. Issue an invoice, inventory goes down. No manual counting required to stay accurate between the two.
Quotations convert directly to invoices when approved. No double entry, no copying data between two documents.
Products
Stokka handles physical products, services, and bundles. A bundle is a package of components sold as a single unit — all components deduct from stock at the point of sale. Cost of goods sold is calculated automatically from purchase costs, so your margins are always visible without a spreadsheet on the side.
People and money
Suppliers, customers, cash accounts, and bank accounts are all first-class in Stokka. Money flows in from sales, out through purchases and expenses, and the running balance is always there. Discounts work as a fixed amount or a percentage — whichever your business actually uses.
VAT and reporting
VAT is calculated automatically on invoices. Tax reports are generated in a format accountants recognize — the goal is that you hand the report to your accountant and they don't have to reconstruct anything from raw data.
The dashboard shows what matters: what's low on stock, what's owed, what's been sold. The reports go deeper for anyone who needs them.
Getting started
Existing businesses can import their products, customers, and suppliers instead of entering everything from scratch. Stokka is fully bilingual — English and Arabic, including RTL layout throughout.
Who it's for
If your business buys things, stores them, and sells them — and you're currently managing that with a spreadsheet, a notebook, or a system that requires an IT person to operate — Stokka is worth your time.
If you need multi-warehouse management, complex manufacturing bills of materials, or a CRM built in — this isn't the right tool. Those are real requirements, but they're a different product for a different profile of business.
The best inventory software is the one your whole team can actually use — not the most feature-complete one gathering dust after week two.
What's next
I'm planning to sit with a few accountants and business owners before I call it done. Building in isolation always means missing something — I'd rather find it in a conversation than after someone's been using the software for three months.
If you run a small business and inventory is a problem you're living with right now, I genuinely want to talk to you at this stage. A single conversation at this point can change a module. After launch, it becomes a feature request on a roadmap.
