KrotLab Stocktaking, offline
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Krot · the mole

Where the signal doesn't reach

Retail chains count stock in basements, cold rooms and back warehouses — places where Wi-Fi dies and cellular never arrived. KrotLab counts there, on the phones and scanners you already own.

Four chains, 1,500 stores — groceries, cosmetics and drugstore, fashion.

Request a pilot See what it reports
Handheld Rack · shelf 04 · 02

Scan something. Type a barcode or a code, set a quantity, press Enter.

Or tap an item from the catalogue:

Item Expected Counted Variance Location
Nothing counted yet.

This is the handheld working screen, rebuilt in your browser with sample data. Every counted position carries a rack and shelf, which is how a variance later gets an address.

Named after the mole. It works underground, where nothing else does.

02

Three things the terminal vendors won't do

  • 02·01

    No vendor lock

    A $150 Android phone counts exactly as well as a $1,500 terminal. When one breaks mid-stocktake, you replace it at the electronics shop across the street — not through a distributor with a six-week lead time.

  • 02·02

    No internet, at any step

    The base station and the handhelds talk over your own Wi-Fi. Nothing leaves the building, nothing waits on a connection. A count in a sub-level storeroom runs exactly like a count in the office.

  • 02·03

    Your hardware, not ours

    Android 4.4 and up, Windows CE terminals, any Bluetooth barcode scanner. The base station is a laptop you already have — macOS, Windows or Linux, 4 GB of RAM.

03

A stocktake, start to finish

Four steps. Only the first one needs anybody who knows what a delimiter is.

  1. 01

    Load the catalogue

    Point KrotLab at the export from your accounting system — txt or csv, any delimiter. You map the columns to fields once and skip the ones you don't need. Duplicates on code and barcode are filtered out and listed, so you know what was dropped.

  2. 02

    Sync the handhelds

    Devices join the same local network as the base station and pull the catalogue. No accounts to pair, no SIM cards, no cloud tenant to provision.

  3. 03

    Count the floor

    Staff scan. Rack and shelf are set with two buttons, so every counted position keeps its location. Three scanning modes cover fast single-unit runs and careful manual entry, and quantities can be spoken instead of typed.

  4. 04

    Pull it back and report

    Results come back over the same Wi-Fi. Export the variance sheet to xlsx or txt. Send recounts to the floor with locations printed on them, then correct the numbers as they come in.

04

What the base station gives you

Every report exports to xlsx or txt.

Variance sheet

Expected against counted, sorted by barcode, code, name or group. The location column reads rack_shelf_quantity, so a missing item comes with the place it should have been. This is the document you hand to the store.

Variance sheet · Sample data
Item Expected Counted Variance Location
Dove Men+Care 150ml 100003 · 8710908156342 12 9 -3 04·02
Old Spice Whitewater 100055 · 8001090353078 6 6 0 04·02
Colgate Total 12 75ml 100017 · 8714789897561 24 24 0 04·03
Oral-B Pro-Expert 100061 · 3014260801069 15 11 -4 04·04
Nivea Soft 75ml 100042 · 4820024700016 8 11 +3 05·01
Garnier Micellar 400ml 100078 · 4015400278580 9 9 0 05·02
Total 74 70 -4

See the unretouched screenshots

05

Your hardware, not ours

The comparison that decides most pilots.

KrotLab Proprietary terminal
Counting device Any Android 4.4+ phone, or a Windows CE terminal you already run One model, from one supplier
Barcode scanner Any Bluetooth scanner The built-in one, or nothing
Replacing a broken unit Same afternoon, from any shop A purchase order and a lead time
Base station A laptop with 4 GB of RAM — macOS, Windows or Linux A licensed server, often Windows only
Internet during a count Not used Usually required
Where your data sits In the building In the vendor's cloud
Catalogue import txt or csv, any delimiter, columns mapped by you A fixed format, or paid integration
Adding a tenth device Install the app Buy a tenth terminal

06

Request a pilot

Tell us how many stores you count and on what. We set up a pilot on your own hardware — one store, one shift, your real catalogue.

We use what you send here to answer you. Nothing else.