From Spreadsheet Chaos to Full Stock Visibility
A 10-person meat distributor was coordinating inventory verbally across five Excel spreadsheets. Custom PowerApps replaced the chaos with real-time visibility and automated invoicing - delivered for under $50,000.
The Situation
A 10-person meat distributor was running their entire inventory operation across multiple Excel spreadsheets. Five staff members were coordinating verbally to track what was on hand, what had been picked, and what had been shipped - a system that worked, sort of, right up until it didn’t.
They needed to scale. They needed to track carton age and weights accurately. They needed to handle industry-specific GS1 barcode variations that off-the-shelf systems don’t always understand. And they needed this without paying the six-figure price tag that traditional warehouse management systems come with.
The off-the-shelf options were expensive and didn’t fit how the team actually worked. The spreadsheets fit the workflow but couldn’t scale. They needed something in between.
What We Built
We built two custom PowerApps - StockMan and StockPile - delivered in phases using a rapid-development approach we call the “cowboy hat” method. Build fast, iterate based on what the team actually uses, keep it under budget.
StockMan is the mobile app staff use on the warehouse floor for receiving and picking. It handles barcode parsing (including the GS1 variations the industry uses), weight tracking, and carton age management. Everything gets captured at the point of action.
StockPile is the web-based inventory management system where supervisors see the full picture. Real-time views of what’s in stock, what’s aged, what needs to move.
The whole thing is integrated with Xero, so invoicing happens automatically from the pick data. No more double-handling. No more manual calculations that eat up a Friday afternoon.
Total cost: under $50,000. Delivered in phases so value started landing early.
The Result
Complete inventory visibility - exact carton weights, exact ages, exact locations, all in one place.
Automated invoice generation - the manual calculations that used to slow down billing are gone. Xero gets the data, generates the invoice, and everyone moves on.
Faster stocktakes - digital verification replaced physical counting and manual reconciliation.
Six months of daily use with same-day issue resolution. The system fits the workflow perfectly because it was built around how the team actually works, not how a generic inventory system thinks they should work.
The outcome has been so successful that Rangelands is now considering selling the system to other meat distributors - a custom internal tool that’s become a potential product in its own right.
“Steve and the team at Secure Minded completely transformed how we manage stock. Their custom-built PowerApps gave us full visibility of carton weights and ages, automated our invoicing, and eliminated hours of manual work. The system fits our workflow perfectly and has run flawlessly for six months - truly a game-changer for our business.”
- Alister Hughes, Business Manager, Rangelands Quality Meats
