Notebook, Excel or junkshop software: which should you use?

A summary, not legal advice. Checked October 7, 2026.

A notebook is enough for a small junkshop where the owner weighs, pays and delivers. Excel or Google Sheets helps once you want daily totals and stock per material without adding by hand. Junkshop software earns its place when several workers weigh and pay, you deliver to trading companies often, and you need to see who changed what. Choose by staff count and volume, not by what is new.

This guide compares the three honestly, job by job, says where general POS apps fit, and lists the questions to ask before you pay any vendor. For the record books a city or the police may require, read our separate guide, "Junkshop permit requirements and record books in the Philippines". This guide does not repeat those rules.

What does a junkshop actually need to record?

• Every purchase: who sold, what material, how many kilos, at what price, and how they were paid.
• Daily totals of kilos and pesos bought.
• Stock on hand per material, and ideally per yard location.
• Deliveries to trading companies: your weight, their accepted weight, the difference, and what they still owe you.
• The cash drawer: opening fund, payouts, expenses, vale and the closing count.
• Supplier history, so you know your suki and can spot a seller who suddenly brings large amounts of tanso.
• Who did what, when several workers handle the scale and the cash.

Where an item came from also matters legally. The Anti-Fencing Law, Presidential Decree No. 1612, defines fencing as buying or dealing in anything you know, or should have known, came from robbery or theft, and says that mere possession of stolen goods is prima facie evidence of fencing. Records that show who sold you what, and when, are how a junkshop shows it bought in good faith.

When is a notebook enough?

A notebook is cheap, needs no battery or signal, and everyone already knows how to use it. If the owner does the weighing and paying, buys a modest volume each day, and delivers to one trading company, a well-kept notebook works.

Its limits show up as the shop grows:

• Daily totals and totals per material are added by hand, and mistakes in the addition are hard to find.
• Stock per material means going back through pages of tickets, so most notebook shops do not know their stock until they count it.
• Comparing your delivery weights with the trading company's is possible, but only if someone copies both numbers side by side every time.
• Pages can be torn out or changed, and there is no record of who did it.
• There is one copy. A flood, a fire or a lost notebook takes your history with it.
• Supplier history is a search through old notebooks.
• You cannot see today's numbers unless you are standing at the counter.

What do Excel and Google Sheets do well and badly?

A spreadsheet fixes the arithmetic. Formulas give you daily totals, totals per material, the weight difference per delivery and the expected cash at closing, as long as the formulas stay correct. It costs little or nothing, and an owner who already uses Excel can set it up in an afternoon.

Google Sheets adds a history. Google's help page says anyone with permission to edit a file can see its earlier versions and restore one, and in Sheets you can right-click a cell to see its edit history. That helps when a number changes and nobody admits to it. A file saved only on one laptop has no such history and no backup unless you make one.

The weaknesses are about people more than formulas:

• Anyone who can type in the sheet can change any number, including yesterday's.
• One deleted row or broken formula can quietly change every total below it.
• Nothing forces ticket numbers to run in order or stops a ticket from being entered twice.
• Typing a spreadsheet on a phone at a busy scale is slow, so workers write on paper and someone types it later, which doubles the work and the mistakes.
• Stock per location, a cash drawer and money owed by trading companies each become another sheet that has to be kept in step with the others.

Can a general POS app like Loyverse work for a junkshop?

General POS apps are built to record sales to customers. Loyverse, for example, documents selling items by weight: in the Back Office or the POS app you set an item's Sold by option to Weight and enter a price per unit of weight, such as per kilo. At checkout a keypad pops up, the cashier enters the weight, and the app multiplies price by weight for the line total. Its help page also points to scanning barcodes with an embedded weight.

That is a sell-side flow, and it works well for what it is built for. A junkshop's main transaction runs the other way: you buy from a supplier and pay them, often after subtracting tara or adding up several weighings, and later deliver to a trading company whose weight you need to compare with yours. You can bend a POS app to record purchases, but it will not track the delivery difference or what a trading company owes you. If your shop also sells items at retail, a POS app is a fair choice for that side of the business.

What does junkshop software add, and what does it cost you?

Software made for junkshops is built around the buy-side ticket, so the purchase, the stock, the delivery and the cash all come from the same records. It usually adds separate logins for each worker, limits on who can change what, an audit trail, and backups that do not depend on you.

The costs are real too: a monthly or yearly fee, a phone and some mobile data at the counter, a few days of learning for staff, and dependence on a vendor that could raise its price, change its product or close. Signal can drop in the middle of a busy morning. Ask how each vendor handles all of that before you move your records.

How do the three compare, job by job?

• Daily totals. Notebook: by hand. Spreadsheet: automatic if the formulas are right. Software: automatic.
• Stock by material. Notebook: only by counting the yard. Spreadsheet: possible with care. Software: kept as you buy and deliver.
• Supplier history. Notebook: search old pages. Spreadsheet: filter by name if names are typed the same way. Software: one screen per supplier.
• Delivery weight differences. Notebook: only if copied side by side. Spreadsheet: a formula per delivery. Software: compared and flagged.
• Cash. Notebook: works with discipline. Spreadsheet: works with discipline. Software: works with discipline, plus a record of each payout.
• Staff access. Notebook: whoever holds the pen. Spreadsheet: whoever can edit. Software: one login and role per worker.
• Backups. Notebook: none unless you photocopy. Spreadsheet: Google Sheets keeps versions; a local Excel file depends on you. Software: depends on the vendor, so ask.
• Records a city or the police may ask for. Notebook: the familiar form; check the record-book guide for what your city requires. Spreadsheet and software: printouts or screens, which may or may not satisfy a given city, so ask your city hall.

What should you ask any junkshop software vendor?

• Does it work on the phones my staff already have, and on weak mobile data?
• Can it record tara and several weighings on one ticket, and number tickets in order?
• Does it compare my delivery weight with the weight the trading company accepted, and track what they owe me?
• Does each worker get their own login, and can I limit what each one can change?
• Can I see every edit and deletion, with who did it and when?
• Can I export all my records to a spreadsheet at any time? Who owns the data?
• Where are the records stored, how are they backed up, and what happens to them if I stop paying?
• How are supplier details protected? The Data Privacy Act of 2012 counts information that identifies a person as personal information, treats government-issued identifiers such as licenses as sensitive personal information, and requires reasonable organizational, physical and technical measures to protect it. That applies to a notebook on the counter as much as to an app.
• Can it produce the records my city or the police ask for, in a form they accept?
• Is there a demo or trial, and is training and support available in Tagalog or my language?

ScrapTrack, the junkshop system by Orvyn Solutions, is one option. Staff record each purchase at the scale as a numbered ticket with the supplier, material, weight (direct, gross minus tara, or several weighings) and price per kilo, and the payout by cash, GCash, Maya, bank transfer or check. It keeps stock per material and yard location, compares delivery weights with what the trading company accepted, runs the daily cash drawer, and gives each worker a login with one of 7 roles, with an audit trail of every change. It runs in the browser on a budget Android phone. It does not file reports with the police or city hall, has no seller ID field yet, and cannot tell you whether digital records satisfy your city's ordinance. A demo is available.

Sources

• How to sell items by weight, Loyverse Help Center (help.loyverse.com). Checked October 7, 2026.
• Presidential Decree No. 1612, Anti-Fencing Law of 1979, on Lawphil (lawphil.net). Checked October 7, 2026.
• Republic Act No. 10173, Data Privacy Act of 2012, on Lawphil (lawphil.net). Checked October 7, 2026.
• Find what's changed in a file, Google Docs Editors Help (support.google.com). Checked October 7, 2026.