Fulfilling your customer’s expectations and delivering goods at the right time is your responsibility that requires efficient inventory management and tracking. It becomes even cumbersome and difficult if not done with caution. As a result, it could impact your fulfillment capability and warehouse costs. You could even run the risk of heavy investment in a stock that does not sell. But don’t worry; there is a solution to these issues. And it is inventory management software. It ensures that you handle those problems efficiently and effectively with its unique and useful features to make everything streamlined and risk-saving. Let’s understand more about this software and how it can help your business succeed.
What is inventory management?
Inventory management software manages and controls a company’s current inventory, including its stocks, buys, and sells. It helps you track all the information, maintains effective stocks, and simplifies product pricing. The software can guide you to facilitate product logistic management and automates different processes such as trading, ordering, transportation, costing, storing, assembling, shipping, and delivery. It also removes the need for manual tasks while improving efficiency, cutting down costs, and saving time. In addition to this, it provides valuable insights to help you accelerate your business success. Now, you could find advanced inventory management software in the market that is of different types and applications based on the industry, business type, and inventory type. Cloud-based inventory management software is even more useful and can be updated and synced in real-time. The key features of modern inventory management software include:
Optimizing inventoryAsset trackingOrganizing warehouseProduct identificationAnd more
What are its different types?
Inventory management software can integrate multiple tasks of an organization using the best technologies for storage, ordering, purchasing, shipping, receiving, reordering, tracking, and turnover. Different types of software available that serve different purposes, such as:
On-premise inventory management softwarePeriodic systems for small businesses who need to send data periodically and maintain less quantity of productsBarcode systems to find and move stocks effortlessly and efficientlySaaS systems that are hosted over the vendor’s server with a certain paid subscriptionRFID tagging software to scan and manage products with better efficiency, but it is costlyPerpetual systems are great for larger businesses that need to record inventory data continually.Cloud-hosted software is the best for businesses of all scales because it is affordable and can be accessed from anywhere, with no maintenance and updates required from your side.
Here, we will talk about the last one: cloud-based inventory management software that has become quite famous these days due to the mentioned reasons. But you may think,
What is the need for inventory management software?
Here’s the answer. It is important to keep the inventory right for growing business. And this whole process is not that easy. From storage, warehousing, trading, shipping, and organizing to tracking the assets takes a significant amount of time, workforce, and effort. Doing everything manually limits productivity and time lags, and as a business, you would never want to oversell your products or incur backorders. It could impact your sales and revenue. This is the reason why you need an efficient inventory management solution to avail the following benefits:
Inventory task automation
The software can automate the overall management process using advanced tools. You can integrate to manage and track purchases, sales, warehouse records, and how many products you have in stock.
Increases productivity
When you are well aware of your warehouse with product status and are capable of tracking metrics, you get an idea of how your business is advancing. You can save a lot of your time wasted on repetitive tasks and manual methods, which in turn increases your productivity.
Customer satisfaction
As a result of all the information available by your side, you will be capable of serving your customers more. You can purchase stocks at the right time, accept more orders and faster, ship and deliver products early. Hence, it increases customer satisfaction due to their orders’ fast processing and is likely to come back and make another purchase to become a loyal customer.
Better product management
To meet customer demands, you need to have some extra stock always. Due to improper product management, businesses might run the risk of overstocking the products. This way, they could end up limiting cash resources, create losses, incur warehouse costs, and whatnot. Inventory management software takes care of these things by controlling your products, eliminating resource blockage, and maintaining the right pricing. Other than these benefits, the software eliminates storage problems, accelerates repeat purchases, performs accurate financial accounting, monitors shipping, purchase, and stock transfers, does precise reporting, incurs low theft incidents, and more.
What industries need to maintain inventory?
The present-day marketplace is faster and more competitive. Therefore, if you want to succeed in your business, you need to have inventory management software. Different industries who need this software are:
Food distributioneCommerce businessesElectronic devicesConsumer goods for sports, health, beauty, home-ware, kitchen essentials, and more
When you research more about inventory software, you could see many options for software available, which can be a time-consuming and stressful task. Save your energy and time by looking at the below-mentioned inventory management software to choose your business’s right one based on its unique needs.
Sortly
Sortly can be your easiest way out of the otherwise-annoying inventory management. Ideal for small businesses, this is a QR-code (or barcode) based inventory utility that lets you track, categorize, and update even the smallest item hassle-free. You can quickly start by importing the existing stock via a CSV file. Besides, Sortly permits smart teamwork with role-based access levels. All the inventory gets synced everywhere with the cloud, or one can opt for offline management. Additionally, you get automatic low-stock alerts and can set reminders to get informed in time. Furthermore, you can check the current inventory status and generate activity-based reports to export as PDF, CSV, etc. Finally, you can use Sortly’s limited-features free tier or avail of its 14-day free trial on paid subscriptions.
Cin7
Thousands of retailers and sellers trust Cin7 as it helps them manage their entire inventory efficiently, make more sales, and grow their business. Cin7 is a powerful tool to connect your items, stock locations, sales channels, orders, workflows, warehouses, reports, etc., into a single automated solution. It empowers your managers involved in finance, operations, eCommerce, and warehouse with the right tools they require to work effectively. It allows you to sell your products through multiple channels, whether you want it online, retail, or wholesale, with flexible features. Manage everything precisely and source efficiently through purchases, contract manufacturing, or simple manufacturing. Set accurate pricing, payment terms, and quotes; provide unique product catalogs, and help your B2B customers more when they shop from your wholesale store. Get end-to-end control of every transaction from EDI orders to bulk purchases. Cin7 organizes your warehouse with its configurable fulfillment as you receive purchase orders and process dispatch. It helps eCommerce businesses reduce selling stress with automated stock tracking, order management, and shipping.
Veeqo
The single platform of Veeqo offers complete control of your inventory irrespective of the number of warehouses and sales channels from where you operate. It is packed with best-in-class features to help you deliver an excellent experience to your customers. Keep your full inventory accurate across multiple sites, physical stores, and marketplaces in real-time. Sale anywhere you wish and get updates of stock levels instantly. Veeqo provides you with multichannel inventory features such as inventory syncing, multi-warehouse routing, inventory forecast, and more. Manage orders across your sales using a single platform, so you never have to miss your orders or oversell them again. You get features like returns management, helpdesk integrations, smartphone application, and wholesale management. Increase your warehouse’s productivity with Veeqo’s easy-to-use platform that helps you pack, pick, manage, and ship your products without hassles. It includes added features like barcode scanner, picking automation, Veeqo scanner, and warehouse reporting. Ship orders in bulk quickly from different sales channels, track deliveries and automate all the repetitive tasks in one place. It includes print shipping labels, parcel tracking, auto carrier selection, and integrated shipping labels. Veeqo integration with 40+ solutions, including eCommerce platforms, over 20 shipping carriers, 3 accounting software, point of sale systems, 3PLs, and more. The Veeqo app is available for iOS and Android both and lets you manage everything with your fingers. They also provide the enterprise-grade barcode scanner – Veeqo Scanner to help you even more.
Unleashed
Get instant clarity over your production, inventory, suppliers, and customers and control them effectively using Unleashed. This platform is great for distributors, wholesalers, and even manufacturers. They help you manage everything with their wide range of features to save time, improve performance, and grow profits. They provide you with perpetual inventory control, so you will be fully aware of how much stocks are at hand in which location. Maintain stock counts and levels lean and quick no matter what number of warehouses and products you manage. Avoid stock-outs, master margins, raise quick sales orders, use strategic pricing, control stock globally in various supply chains, and more using by unleashing the power of Unleashed. Enable greater transparency for the complicated manufacturing process by tracking the serial number and batch number, product bills, auto-assemblies, and assemblies. Maintain healthy profit margins and view accurate production costs. Unleashed helps distributors and wholesalers to manage their warehouses in multiple locations with ease using just one system, simplify stock takes, purchase and sell in multiple currencies, and use barcode scanning. Track how your business is performing through updated KPIs using their Business Intelligence tools. You can view and dig deeper into your business data with 20+ reports on your operations to analyze things working for you and where you need to optimize. Use the Unleashed Sales application to empower your admins and salespeople with the precise inventory data they require. Enable your trade customers to help themselves using the B2B store and reduce time spent on individual sales. Unleashed protects your business data and customer information using advanced security features, including account-controlled user access and 2-step authentication. Automate functions by integrating with Xero, Salesforce, Prospect CRM, etc.
Brightpearl
The digital operation software of Brightpearl is retail-tailored and built to support Omnichannel merchants and their operational agility. It helps them boost sales, respond to changing market dynamics, and exceed customer expectations. Brightpearl offers an extensive infrastructure that helps you automate and centralize critical operations such as inventory, post-purchase, order management, fulfillment, warehousing, shipping, accounting, purchasing, POS, CRM, business intelligence, and supplier management. Centralize your offline and online sales channels, suppliers, inventory locations, and customers over a single system to save time and reduce cost. Automate labor-intensive other critical processes throughout the workflow from shipping, order fulfillment, inventory allocation, purchasing, and invoicing to accounting. Transform your business operation data into useful, actionable insights with financial views, real-time analytics, and forecasting on products, customers, and sales channels to help you make better and faster business decisions. Enable quick adjustments in case of unexpected market shifts, business expansions, and growing consumer demands. Brightpearl’s agile functions assist you in scaling easily without compromising your business operations or time lags.
QuickBooks
Manage your business across multiple channels using QuickBooks. It helps you list your products on different platforms and manage them easily to increase your brand awareness while growing your customers. Track fulfillment and inventory across locations and sales channels in one place and take control of every activity to make sure your product listing, data, and orders remain up-to-date. QuickBooks serves as one of the best accounting software you can use to get insights on your expenses, income, profit margins, revenue, and more. Automate tasks like invoicing, financial data, bank reconciliation, budgeting, and removing data entry. Organize everything easily and get ready for the tax time without loads of work or stress. Just capture and store all the receipts and keep yourself informed with their mobile application to stay compliant and maximize deductions. You can connect your credit card and bank accounts with QuickBooks and get better insights into your cash flow instantly. View profits, loss, and balance sheets at a glance with simple clicks while simplifying your bookkeeping. QuickBooks allows multiple users to use the software simultaneously while tracking every activity. It helps you accountants, bookkeepers, and colleagues to perform their functions efficiently. QuickBooks utilizes advanced, industry-grade security features to protect your data and backs up everything automatically that you can access anywhere, anytime, using any device. Customize accounting solutions with tools like time tracking, cloud accounting, inventory management, payment processing, and more.
Orderhive
The easy-to-use but powerful inventory management software of Orderhive helps you streamline things so you can focus on growing your business. Serialize inventory in lots and batches, auto-sync across different sales channels, and locate it quickly using the software. Simplify your product management no matter if you have thousands of SKUs or just one, multiple stores, or just one using the virtual product storage dashboard. Manage your product catalogs along with simple, bundled, and variant products. You can set different pricing options, export and import bulk product data, generate barcodes and print them, manage different inventory locations, and enjoy smart tagging and categorization. Reduce the risk of underselling or overselling by keeping an eye on outgoing and incoming inventory. Set out-of-stock and low-stock alerts, reorder levels, automatic PO creation, stock count forms, track packing, picking, and shipping products out of warehouses; reorder, backorder items, and adjust stock and pricing quickly.
Zoho
Get an all-around inventory management solution with Zoho. From managing orders and tracking inventory to handling tax, it helps businesses ease their inventory issues. The single application helps you group, customize, and track products for better control over the stocks. You can categorize products based on their attributes, manage products at different warehouse locations, track their movement, and watch over their serial numbers and expiration dates. Maintain an excellent customer lifecycle by managing operations from accepting orders to dispatching without filling data every step. Create packing slips and print labels in your desired format, convert sales orders into invoices, send them through email, and track the status without any hassle. Manage vendor bills and transactions seamlessly and avoid data theft or relationship compromises with them. For this, create price lists, update them automatically, track paid and unpaid bills, create back orders, initiate drop shipment, and maintain order history. Expand your business with integrations like post-shipment to inform your customers always; shopping carts and marketplaces to expand sales; Crossfire EDI to automate order receiving process; accounting solutions like Zoho Books; and CRMs like Zoho CRM. Enjoy automation with features like barcode scanning, modify URLs using web-hooks, Deluge Script, etc. Zoho helps you generate reports quickly to determine business performance, group items using SKU generator, and reorder points for low stocks.
DEAR Systems
DEAR is a cloud ERP system that helps businesses connect with different sales channels, manage them, and grow their business more. It is a good inventory solution for different businesses, including manufacturing, wholesale, and retail. This multi-module inventory management software accelerates your business growth with impeccable features and automates the process to save your time. It streamlines operations by consolidating features in a single software to manage sales across different channels. Make insightful decisions for manufacturing, production, and sales with bills and other data clearly visible on the easy-to-use dashboard. You can integrate VAT-compliant inventory and accounting software to eliminate financial risks. Use their retail POS system that is intuitive, easy-to-deploy, and powerful to help sell on different platforms and organize the storefront. Facilitate easy fulfillment using their advanced Warehouse Management Software (WMS) and reduce costs. From workflow to accurate reporting, DEAR leverages powerful automation. Moreover, it makes B2B payment easy against all invoices and finalized orders. You can manage everything smoothly, like production planning, purchase scheduling for raw materials, and capacity planning.
Conclusion
Gone are the days of spreadsheets. The new and emerging technologies enable fast, secure, and easy methods to manage your inventory. Thus, use inventory management software to manage everything effortlessly from stock purchasing, storage, bookkeeping, orders, fulfillment, billing, payments, and tracking your business performance. Tackle inventory management using barcodes with these tools.
