Crude oil price on August 6

Brent crude futures fell 37 cents, or 0.5%, to $79.08 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures dropped 53 cents, or 0.7%, to $74.69 a barrel. Brent had ended marginally higher on Wednesday, whereas WTI settled slightly lower.
A proposed agreement between Iran and Oman aimed at ending the U.S.-Iran conflict would hand Tehran control over ships entering the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, a senior Iranian source and two regional officials told Reuters on Wednesday. The proposal marks one of the biggest concessions made to Iran so far.

Also read: Trump claims Iran reached out for talks, says clarity may come in 48 hours

US President Donald Trump has said a deal to reopen the strait is close even as US officials have consistently maintained that they would not agree to Iran controlling access to the world’s most important energy trade route.

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Iran has also warned Gulf states that any fresh U.S. attack on its territory would lead to retaliation against key energy infrastructure across the region. The warning is seen as an effort by Tehran to raise the cost of military action by threatening Washington’s closest regional allies.
Separately, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said on Wednesday they had launched missile attacks on a Saudi oil tanker near the Red Sea port of Yanbu and another Saudi oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden. Saudi Arabia has not confirmed either incident. The risk of Houthi attacks disrupting shipping in the Red Sea continues to temper optimism over a broader recovery in Middle East shipping routes.

What are experts saying?

The outlook for oil prices continues to depend on how long supply disruptions persist. JPMorgan estimates that every additional month of disruption could lift Brent crude prices by about $7 to $8 a barrel. If the disruption extends to three months, the bank expects average monthly Brent prices to reach around $114 a barrel.

Goldman Sachs has also cautioned that Brent could rise to $120 a barrel if disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transit route, continue.

Read more:How the Iran war exposed cracks in the US-Israel partnership

Despite that risk, Goldman Sachs’ base case assumes tensions in the Middle East will eventually ease. Under that scenario, the bank expects Brent to average $80 a barrel in the fourth quarter and $75 a barrel next year. However, it said the risks to its forecast remain skewed to the upside, citing the possibility of continued disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

Manchester City kicks off the second match of its preseason Asia tour on Wednesday against a K League All-Stars squad in Seoul, South Korea, giving fans around the world a chance to watch new manager Enzo Maresca continue shaping his squad ahead of the 2026-27 Premier League campaign.

The match is being played at Seoul World Cup Stadium, a venue that hosted matches during the 2002 World Cup, with kickoff set for noon local UK time, which translates to 7 a.m. Eastern time in the United States, 8 p.m. in South Korea, 4:30 p.m. in India and 9:30 p.m. in Australia.

How to Watch

The match will not air on traditional television in the United Kingdom or in most markets around the world. Instead, Manchester City is streaming the game live through CITY+, the club’s own in-house subscription streaming service, available on the club’s official website and mobile app. The service costs £34.99 annually or £9.99 per month on its own, or fans can access it as part of a broader Premium Membership package priced at £65 per year, which bundles CITY+ with other club membership benefits.

For fans in South Korea specifically, the CITY+ stream will not be available, since the match is being blacked out in the host country, likely to preserve the value of any local broadcast rights tied to the K League All-Stars’ side. Local South Korean broadcasters may carry separate coverage of the match in that market, though no single confirmed domestic broadcaster had been widely reported ahead of kickoff. Fans without a CITY+ subscription elsewhere can still follow the match through live audio commentary available via the Matchday Centre on Manchester City’s official website and app, along with in-game highlights and text updates.

Manchester City has also confirmed that extended highlights and a full-match replay will be made available on CITY+ shortly after the final whistle for subscribers who are unable to watch the match live given the early morning kickoff time in markets such as the United States.

Part of a Broader Asia Tour

Wednesday’s match against the K League All-Stars is the second of three fixtures on Manchester City’s preseason tour of Asia. The club opened its tour with a match against Inter Milan in Hong Kong, which finished 1-1 after Divin Mubama opened the scoring for City before Benjamin Pavard equalized for the Italian side, with Inter ultimately winning the ensuing penalty shootout. City will close out its Asia tour on Sunday, Aug. 9, with a match against Atletico Madrid, also kicking off at noon UK time and also streamed live through CITY+.

This marks City’s first meeting with a K League All-Stars selection since previously playing in South Korea as recently as 2023, a trip the club has described as reflecting the strong fan interest in both Manchester City and the broader European game within the country. The K League All-Stars format brings together a squad of standout players drawn from across South Korea’s top-flight domestic league to face a single high-profile international opponent, a fixture that has become an annual preseason tradition for major European clubs touring the region.

A Tricky Opponent

Despite representing an exhibition-style selection rather than a traditional club side, the K League All-Stars have built a reputation in recent years for competing closely with elite European opposition. The squad defeated Newcastle United in a 2025 exhibition match and pushed Tottenham Hotspur to a narrow 4-3 defeat in a 2024 meeting, results that suggest Wednesday’s fixture could prove more competitive than a typical preseason friendly against a similarly assembled all-star side.

A New Era Under Maresca

Wednesday’s match comes at a significant moment for Manchester City, marking the beginning of the club’s first full season since the departure of longtime manager Pep Guardiola. New head coach Enzo Maresca is using the preseason tour to evaluate his squad and begin implementing his own tactical approach ahead of City’s bid to reclaim the Premier League title from Arsenal.

Several key first-team players remain unavailable for the match following their participation at the FIFA World Cup earlier this summer, including Erling Haaland, Rodri, Nico O’Reilly, Elliot Anderson and Jérémy Doku. Rodri in particular is expected to be sidelined for an extended period after the club confirmed he underwent minor back surgery, a development that comes amid reported interest from Real Madrid in the Spanish midfielder. Meanwhile, Rúben Dias, Matheus Nunes and Omar Marmoush have rejoined the touring squad in South Korea after being unavailable for City’s opening match against Inter Milan, and are expected to feature for at least a portion of Wednesday’s match.

According to team news reported ahead of kickoff, City’s starting lineup for the match against the K League All-Stars was expected to include Gianluigi Donnarumma in goal behind a backline of Khusanov, Dias as captain, Gvardiol and Ait-Nouri, with Lewis, Kovacic and Reijnders anchoring midfield, and Foden, Mubama and Semenyo leading the attacking line.

With City set to face Atletico Madrid in its final Asia tour match on Sunday before returning to Europe to complete preseason preparations, Wednesday’s match against the K League All-Stars represents an important step in Maresca’s effort to build cohesion within his squad ahead of a Premier League campaign that will see City looking to reclaim the title after Arsenal’s triumph the previous season. Fans looking to follow the match in real time are encouraged to confirm their regional CITY+ availability ahead of kickoff, given the blackout restrictions in place for South Korean viewers and the early morning start time facing audiences across North and South America.

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For most small businesses, inventory is the second-largest use of cash after payroll and rent. Yet it rarely gets managed with the same discipline. Payroll runs on a schedule. Rent is a fixed line item. Inventory, by contrast, is often tracked in a spreadsheet that someone updates when they remember to, or not tracked in any structured way at all until a bestseller runs out mid-season or a storage unit fills up with stock that stopped moving a year ago.

That gap matters more for a small business than a large one. A national retailer that misjudges demand on one product line barely notices. A small business that ties up a third of its working capital in the wrong stock can spend months recovering.

This guide covers what inventory management actually involves, the core methods worth knowing, how to build a working system from scratch, and where a spreadsheet stops being enough.

What Inventory Management Means for a Small Business

Inventory management is the process of tracking, ordering, and controlling the stock a business buys and sells, so it has the right amount of product on hand without tying up more cash than necessary.

At a large company, that process is usually a dedicated function with its own software and staff. At a small business, it’s typically one person, often the owner, doing it alongside sales, hiring, and everything else.

That difference shapes the whole approach. A small business can’t absorb the cost of overstock the way a larger one can, and it usually can’t negotiate the supplier terms that make just-in-time ordering low-risk. The goal isn’t to copy enterprise inventory practices at a smaller scale. It’s to run a version built for thin margins, limited storage, and one or two people managing it.

Why Small Businesses Struggle With It

The challenges are fairly consistent across industries, even though the products differ.

Knowing how much to buy. Order too much and cash sits on a shelf instead of in the business. Order too little and a customer walks out empty-handed or worse, buys from a competitor and doesn’t come back.

Limited space. Most small businesses don’t have a warehouse to absorb excess stock. A storage closet or a corner of the shop floor has to do double duty, which makes overbuying a physical problem as much as a financial one.

Manual tracking errors. Spreadsheets and handwritten logs drift from reality fast. A miscount here, a forgotten update there, and the numbers on paper stop matching what’s actually on the shelf.

Supplier leverage. Small businesses generally don’t have the order volume to negotiate the pricing or flexible terms that larger buyers get, which makes lead times and minimum order quantities harder constraints to work around.

Seasonal and demand swings. A slow month can look like healthy inventory levels right up until a rush hits and reveals how thin the buffer actually was.

None of these are solved by one trick. They’re solved by picking a method that fits the business and applying it consistently, which is the next section.

Core Inventory Management Methods

A handful of methods cover most of what a small business needs. Few businesses use just one; most combine two or three.

ABC Analysis

ABC analysis sorts inventory into three tiers based on value and sales impact, not just volume:

• A items : a small share of SKUs that drive the largest share of revenue or cost. These get the closest attention: frequent counts, tighter reorder rules, stronger supplier relationships.
• B items : moderate value, moderate attention. Monthly reviews are usually enough.
• C items : the bulk of the catalog by count, but a small share of value. Quarterly review is often sufficient, and some businesses move slow C items to special-order only.

The practical benefit is focus. A business with 500 SKUs doesn’t need to watch all 500 with equal intensity, it needs to watch the 50 or so that actually move the needle.

A quick example: a boutique candle shop carries 120 SKUs. Ranking them by annual revenue shows that 18 scented candles account for roughly 70% of sales – those become A items, checked weekly. The next 30 or so items (seasonal scents, gift sets) make up another 20% of revenue and become B items, reviewed monthly. The remaining 70-plus SKUs – one-off colors, discontinued scents still on the shelf – generate the last 10% and become C items, counted quarterly and candidates for clearance if they don’t move.

FIFO (First In, First Out)

FIFO means the oldest stock sells first. It’s standard for anything perishable or trend-sensitive – food, cosmetics, seasonal apparel – where holding onto older inventory too long turns it into a write-off. Rotating stock physically (older items to the front) makes FIFO easy to enforce without extra software.

Reorder Point (ROP)

The reorder point is the stock level that triggers a new order, calculated as expected demand during the supplier’s lead time, plus a buffer for uncertainty (safety stock):

Reorder point = (average daily sales × lead time in days) + safety stock

Example: a product sells 8 units a day, and the supplier takes 6 days to deliver. Lead-time demand is 48 units. Add a safety stock buffer of 15 units for demand variability, and the reorder point is 63 units – the moment stock hits that number, it’s time to order, not the moment the shelf looks low.

Economic Order Quantity (EOQ)

EOQ estimates the order size that minimizes total cost by balancing ordering costs (placing and receiving an order) against carrying costs (storing it). It’s most useful for A-tier items with steady, predictable demand for volatile or seasonal products, it tends to oversimplify.

Just-in-Time (JIT)

JIT means ordering stock to arrive right when it’s needed, minimizing how much cash sits in storage. It works well when suppliers are fast and reliable. For a small business with a single supplier and a multi-week lead time, it’s a riskier fit – a single delayed shipment can mean empty shelves with no buffer to absorb it.

Building an Inventory System, Step by Step

Most small businesses don’t need a sophisticated system on day one. They need a consistent one.

1. Pick one tracking method and commit to it. Spreadsheet, dedicated software, or a hybrid, the specific tool matters less than using it consistently. Switching methods every few months is what causes the drift that leads to phantom inventory: stock that exists on paper but not on the shelf, or vice versa.

2. Set par levels and reorder points for your top sellers first. Trying to calculate reorder points for an entire catalog on day one is a good way to never finish. Start with the 15–20 SKUs that drive most of the revenue, using the ABC framework above, and expand from there.

3. Build in cycle counting. Instead of one exhausting annual count, count a rotating slice of inventory on a regular schedule – A items weekly or biweekly, B items monthly, C items quarterly. Discrepancies get caught while they’re small, not after they’ve compounded for a year.

4. Connect inventory to your books. If sales, stock counts, and accounting live in three disconnected places, someone is doing manual reconciliation and manual reconciliation is where errors hide the longest. Setting up a solid framework for small business bookkeeping ensures your inventory costs accurately flow into your financial statements.

Spreadsheet or Software? Knowing When to Switch

A spreadsheet is a perfectly reasonable inventory system for a business with a small catalog and one sales channel. The signs it’s time to move on are fairly clear:

• Stock counts are wrong often enough that staff double-check before promising a customer availability
• The business sells across more than one channel (in-store, online, marketplace) and keeping them in sync manually eats real time each week
• Inventory tracking is taking hours a week that could go toward the business itself
• The business has outgrown a single location

When those signs show up, a handful of tools cover most small business needs:

*Confirm current pricing directly with each vendor, plans and rates change frequently.

None of these is universally “best” – the right one depends on sales channels, whether the business manufactures anything, and what it already uses for point-of-sale or accounting. It’s worth testing free tiers or trials against actual order volume before committing to a paid plan. If the business is also choosing accounting software around the same time, best small business accounting software is worth reading alongside this, since the two decisions often affect each other.

Inventory KPIs Worth Tracking

A few numbers reveal whether an inventory system is actually working, beyond a gut sense of “we seem to be running low on things.”

Inventory Turnover Ratio

How many times inventory is sold and replaced over a period, calculated as COGS [cost of goods sold – the direct cost of the products a business sells, defined in detail in the IRS’s Tax Guide for Small Business] ÷ average inventory value. A low ratio suggests overstocking or slow-moving products; a very high one can mean the business is understocked and risking stockouts.

Carrying Cost

The cost of holding inventory, including storage, insurance, and capital tied up. It typically runs 20–30% of inventory value per year. When working with tight cash margins, cutting unnecessary overhead – whether by avoiding overstocking or using free payroll software for your team, helps keep operating capital free for inventory replenishment.

Stockout Rate

The share of demand that couldn’t be met because an item was out of stock. This one is easy to underestimate, since a stockout often shows up as a customer who simply leaves rather than a complaint that gets logged.

Sell-Through Rate

The percentage of received stock that actually sells within a given period. A consistently low sell-through rate on a product is usually the clearest early signal that it needs to be discounted, bundled, or dropped.

Mistakes That Quietly Cost Small Businesses Money

Buying in bulk without running the carrying-cost math. A supplier discount for ordering 500 units instead of 100 looks like savings on the invoice. If 300 of those units sit unsold for six months, the storage and capital cost can erase the discount entirely.

Counting inventory once a year and trusting the number the rest of the time. A lot can drift in eleven months. Cycle counting catches problems while they’re still small and cheap to fix.

Treating every sales channel as the same pool of stock. A business selling in-store and online without synced inventory will eventually oversell a product on one channel while it sits unsold in the other.

Ignoring supplier lead time until it becomes urgent. Reorder points built on the assumption that a supplier will always deliver on time tend to fail exactly when they’re needed most – during a supplier’s own busy season.

Not distinguishing A items from C items. Applying the same level of attention to a top seller and a slow-moving accessory wastes time on the products that matter least and under-manages the ones that matter most.

Where to Start

A small business doesn’t need every method in this guide running at once. The practical starting point is narrower: pick a tracking system, calculate reorder points for the products that actually drive revenue, and build in a counting rhythm that catches errors before they compound. Everything else – software, KPIs, more advanced methods like EOQ – is worth adding once that foundation is in place, not before.

Disney and TikTok have agreed a deal which will allow creators to use clips from Disney films, including its subsidiaries, in their videos.

It means clips from hit franchises like Star Wars, Toy Story and the Marvel Cinematic Universe will soon start popping up in videos – which will also be shared on Disney’s short-form video platform, Verts.

The scheme will be launched in the US before being rolled out to other countries.

Neither company shared financial details of the agreement, although it follows the collapse of a $1bn (£745m) deal between Disney and OpenAI which would have let people use its characters in AI-generated videos.

That agreement was cancelled in March when OpenAI shut down its AI video generation tool Sora, citing a decision to focus on other parts of its business.

“Today, fans are celebrating our stories in entirely new ways,” said Disney’s chief marketing and brand officer Asad Ayaz, following the TikTok deal being announced.

“Disney owns some of the world’s biggest franchises but ownership of attention is shifting towards creators,” social media expert Matt Navarra told BBC News.

“Hollywood used to market at fans – now it needs to give fans the raw materials to market with it, and that is quite a profound shift.”

TikTok said its platform saw an average of 6.5 million posts relating to film and TV per day last year.

Fans like to use clips from films and TV shows in their videos, but without express permission, they would often be taken down due to copyright claims.

This makes it harder for a wide audience to engage with fan-created content around a big release.

TikTok would also benefit from the “credibility of becoming a formal distribution partner to one of Hollywood’s biggest studios,” Navarra said.

He added that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm gives it the power to “influence which character or scene or forgotten franchise suddenly becomes very valuable again”.

Disney and TikTok said a jointly-run programme would boost some creators’ videos and give them access to exclusive events.

“This is a deal that repositions and recovers Disney in the UGC [user-generated content] space following the content gap left by the sudden collapse of Sora,” Gareth Sutcliffe from Enders Analysis said.

But he said it was not without risk.

“There is an ongoing safety debate around TikTok under European online rules,” he said.

“At a minimum, Disney will need to employ significant guardrails to curate the creator content that is selected.”

Online creators and influencers are becoming more important to brands’ marketing strategies.

Last year, a report from Oxford Economics said YouTube content creators contributed £2.2bn to the UK economy in 2024 and supported 45,000 jobs.

There is also a recognition that even very small influencers, who focus on niche topics, might have lower follower counts but come with a hyper-engaged audience.

Disney launched its short form video platform Verts in the US in March, with plans to expand that further around the world.

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