The concept of inventory management can be either straightforward or intricate, depending on the specific business context, and there is no one-size-fits-all tool or method for every setup. 

Consider a bakery that produces only bread; the essential ingredients to track are flour, water, yeast, and salt. In this case, a complex ERP system or some fancy POS is overkill; you can simply use your senses to manage your inventory. 

On the other hand, if you operate a high-end restaurant like noma :) with a multitude of ingredients to manage, with some fresh, others dried, stored in various locations, some ready for immediate use, while others still in the fermentation process, different ingredients have varying lead times, come in different units of measure, and are sourced from multiple suppliers. Unless managed well...this is a recipie for chaos. 

I have dealt with inventories exceeding 20k single SKUs, no joke and if there is anything I can contribute to this post is N 1. 

N1. A good place to start is a data table that you are able to export as CSV or XLSX as this will ease data uploads to other softwares if need arise it doesnt matter where as long as it satisfies the need. 

what are the fields on this table then? 

This is relatve to your set up, but here are a x most important ones: 

Name ( Language 1)

Internal Reference

Supplier

Purchase Unit of Measure

Cost Price  

Sale Unit of measure

Sale Price

*Ps I mostly is google sheet as it allows for collaboration and here is a link for a free to use product list template. 

How are you keping track of your inventory?