Sortly is genuinely good at what it was built for: a clean mobile app for tracking items, assets and supplies with photos, QR/barcode labels and custom fields. Teams that manage equipment, tools or supply closets love it — and if that's your job, you probably don't need to switch. This post is for the other reader: the shop, wholesaler or parts business that doesn't just count stock, but sells it. That's where a pure tracker runs out of road, and it's worth being honest about why.
What Sortly does well
Credit where it's due. Sortly's strengths are real: fast visual check-in/check-out, item photos, QR label printing, custom fields, low-stock alerts, and one of the better inventory mobile apps on the market. For asset and supply tracking — who has what, where it is, when it's due back — it's a strong pick, and a comparison should say so plainly.
Where it stops for a selling business
Sortly tracks quantities; it does not bill customers. There's no sales invoice, no customer account with a running balance, no receivables aging, no order → delivery note → invoice chain, and no cash or bank tracking. For an asset team that's fine — they never invoice anyone. For a business that sells stock, it means the moment a customer buys something, you leave Sortly and open a second app to raise the invoice. And the two don't share a ledger.
The hidden cost of the second app
Once invoicing lives somewhere else, you're back to the two-app problem: you decrement stock in one place and bill in another, and keeping them in step becomes a daily chore. A voided invoice doesn't always return the stock. A customer's balance says one number in your billing tool and another in your head. You pay twice — a second subscription, plus the reconciliation time that a single system would have saved you.
What an "alternative with invoicing" should include
If tracking isn't enough for you, the replacement isn't "a better tracker" — it's a system that closes the loop. Look for: sales and purchase invoices that post stock automatically in the same transaction; customer and supplier accounts with running balances and receivables aging; an order → delivery note → invoice chain so nothing ships unbilled; cash and bank tracking so payments land against the right account; and barcode stocktakes so the counts still stay honest. That last point matters — you shouldn't have to give up the thing Sortly did well to get the things it didn't.
Honest trade-offs
To be fair the other direction: if your mobile-first, photo-heavy asset workflow is the whole job, an all-in-one ERP-style tool is more than you need, and Sortly will feel lighter. The switch makes sense specifically when invoicing, customer balances and a document chain are part of your day — when the counting was never the point, selling was.
Stokpax is built for that second case: barcode stocktakes and fast search on the inventory side, but with sales/purchase invoicing, customer and supplier accounts, an order-to-invoice chain and cash/bank tracking in the same system — so an invoice moves stock and updates a balance in one action, no second app. It runs in the browser, imports your items and customers from CSV, and starts with a 7-day free trial from $29/month.