Have you ever found yourself in a dire situation where you needed something urgently, but you ran out of it? Running out of essential items, like tissues or sugar, can be frustrating, especially in business. Not keeping enough stock can lead to undesirable situations and negatively impact your business operations.
As a business owner, going on a quick grocery run to stock up essentials may not be feasible. Being out of stock can cause you to lose customers, credibility, and sales, resulting in significant losses. To prevent these losses, it’s crucial to keep your business stocked up with essential items at all times.
Effective inventory management is critical to the success of any business. However, managing inventory across multiple locations can be a daunting task. Fortunately, the advent of technology has brought about the use of inventory management software, making the process easier and more efficient.
Our blog features a comprehensive list of the best inventory management software in the market. By using these tools, you can gain visibility across multiple locations and conduct seamless transactions, freeing up your time for other important tasks.
Before delving into the list, it’s essential to understand what inventory management software is and why it’s crucial for your business. Let’s explore the benefits of inventory management software and how it can help streamline your operations.
What is an Inventory Management Software?
First off, let’s try to understand what inventory management is.
Inventory management Inventory management is a crucial process that encompasses ordering, storing, utilizing, and selling a company’s goods. This process typically involves managing raw materials, components, finished products, warehousing, and processing these items.
The objective of inventory management is to monitor and track all the company’s inventory from the moment of purchase to the point of sale. Effective inventory management allows businesses to determine the optimal amount and timing of stock to order, minimizing waste and maximizing profits.
An inventory management software Inventory management software is a powerful web-based application designed to help businesses track and manage inventory throughout the supply chain, from manufacturer to warehouse to point of sale.
With this software, you can easily monitor inventory levels, track material purchases, deliveries, and sales. By comparing your current inventory stock with past sales data, you can accurately predict the stock you will need and ensure you always have the necessary products in stock.
In addition to inventory management, this software also streamlines other business processes, such as invoicing, accounting, financial reporting, report creation, and shipment tracking.
Now that you have a rough idea about inventory management software, let’s take a look at some of the advantages or benefits of using them in your business.
Benefits of Using an Inventory Management Software
1. Increases Productivity and Efficiency
Inventory management software provides businesses with a centralized location to monitor inventory levels, track sales, access vendor information, manage payments, and more.
This organized and streamlined process enables businesses to complete tasks more efficiently, reducing the time spent on tracking, processing, and auditing inventory. By automating repetitive tasks, businesses can focus on more critical matters, leading to increased productivity and efficiency.
2. Prevents Overselling and Stock Outs
Maintaining an accurate inventory picture is crucial for businesses as it prevents overselling, which leads to stockouts, lost customers, and damage to the company’s reputation and marketing budget.
Inventory management software provides businesses with the ability to manage orders and inventory across multiple channels, providing real-time visibility into stock levels and when replenishment is needed. This ensures businesses maintain optimal inventory levels, prevent stockouts, and maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty.
3. Brings in Higher Profits
Inventory management software allows businesses to track inventory performance, identifying top-performing products and those that require improvement. This data provides valuable business insights, enabling informed decisions that increase revenue and profits.
Accurate inventory tracking through this software also helps businesses reduce waste, detect theft, and track productivity, resulting in improved income without adding to labor costs.
4. Reduces Errors
Inventory management software provides businesses with the benefit of automating manual tasks that are susceptible to errors, such as data entry, calculations, and expense tracking.
By automating these tasks, the software helps prevent costly mistakes and eliminates human errors, providing precise and accurate information at the user’s fingertips. This eliminates the need for manual double-checks of inventory stock and complex calculations, streamlining business operations and saving valuable time.
5. Improves Customer Experience
Implementing inventory management software ensures that your business always has the most popular and sought-after products in stock, preventing stockouts and improving customer service through a transparent purchase and shipping process.
This streamlined process leads to higher customer satisfaction, resulting in repeat business and an increase in customer loyalty. In addition to improving customer experience, inventory management software also increases efficiency, leading to higher profitability.
To help you get started, we have compiled a list of some of the best inventory management software available in the market. Check out our top recommendations and take your inventory management to the next level!
List of 9 Inventory Management Software
1. Inflow Inventory
Are you on a tight budget and looking for a comprehensive inventory management software? Look no further than inFlow Inventory! Ideal for various industries like retail, wholesale, distribution, manufacturing, and e-commerce, this software makes inventory management a breeze.
inFlow Inventory offers real-time inventory tracking across multiple locations and keeps everyone in the loop about inventory levels. With features like order management, purchase and sales tracking, billing management, and e-commerce and accounting integration, this software has got you covered.
In addition, inFlow Inventory comes with a mobile app and supports barcode scanning via smart scanners. Need assistance? You can reach their support team via live chat, email, or phone.
Pricing:
- Free version available
- Entrepreneur plan costs $89/month
- Small Business plan costs $249/month
- Mid-sized Business plan costs $499/month
- Enterprise plan – custom pricing
2. Orderhive
Orderhive is a cloud-based inventory management software ideal for small businesses and e-commerce operations. It simplifies inventory, warehouse, purchase, returns, and shipping management. The software supports the FIFO method and uses the Kanban approach to ensure timely stock replenishment.
Orderhive facilitates multi-channel selling and ensures real-time synchronization of all inventory channels. Bulk product addition, update, and deletion are made easy with Orderhive, along with managing order payments, and generating multiple shipping carrier labels.
Orderhive integrates with several popular apps such as Amazon, Shopify, QuickBooks, and FedEx, among others. It also has a mobile app and works seamlessly on all major browsers. With pricing plans starting at $44.99/month, Orderhive is an affordable option for businesses of all sizes.
Pricing:
- Free version available for Shopify users
- Lite plan costs $49.99/month for 200 orders and one user
- Starter plan costs $149.99/month for 1,200 orders and three users.
- Growth plan costs $299.99/month for 3,000 orders and five users
- Enterprise plan – Custom pricing and unlimited users
3. Zoho Inventory
Zoho Inventory is an inventory management software that provides an efficient way to manage inventory across multiple channels, making it a perfect fit for users of the Zoho suite. It features an intuitive user interface suitable for small and mid-sized retail businesses, enabling hassle-free management of orders, deliveries, purchase orders, sales, invoicing, and shipping.
With Zoho Inventory, you can easily keep track of the stock flow of different products, including each unit in every warehouse. It also supports barcode scanning for accurate packing and shipping. Zoho Inventory allows seamless integration with popular e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, and eBay, enabling you to manage your orders from a single location.
Pricing:
- Free plan available
- Standard plan costs $59
- Professional plan costs $99
- Premium plan costs $159
- Elite plan costs $239
4. Ordoro
Streamline your multichannel selling with Ordoro, the top-notch inventory management software that saves time and improves efficiency. With an intuitive user interface, Ordoro makes it easy for multiple users to work on the same system.
Ordoro lets you create, update, and manage your products with ease, syncing all sales channels automatically. Manage and track all incoming orders and keep accurate location details of your products with its order tracking feature. Stay on top of your inventory with its stock alerts, preventing overstocking or low stocks.
Other powerful features of Ordoro include dropshipping, batch-print shipping labels, multiple warehouse tracking, kitting capabilities, and barcode scanning. Ordoro also offers seamless integrations with popular e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, and more.
Choose from Ordoro’s various plans – Starter plan for $59/month, Pro plan for $499/month, and Enterprise plan with custom pricing – and take your business to the next level!
Pricing:
- Express plan starts at $59
- Pro plan starts at $499
- Enterprise plan starts at $999
5. QuickBooks Commerce
QuickBooks Commerce is an excellent inventory management software that seamlessly integrates with QuickBooks accounting. It simplifies order management, tracks inventory, and streamlines invoicing.
QuickBooks Commerce provides a comprehensive view of your inventory by syncing with multiple sales channels and allowing real-time inventory tracking. It also keeps you informed of backorders and suggests stock reordering during shortages.
Ideal for restaurants, QuickBooks Commerce efficiently tracks food expenses, automates invoice approvals, and easily integrates with other software like Square Inventory. It also offers features like sales reporting, tax calculation, barcode scanning, accounting, expense tracking, and more.
Pricing:
- QuickBooks Commerce starts from $40/month
6. Shopventory
Looking for a comprehensive inventory management solution that offers accurate tracking and forecasting capabilities? Shopventory is the cloud-based software you need! It enables real-time monitoring of sales and inventory performance across multiple channels and locations.
With its advanced reporting and predictive analytics features, Shopventory provides a detailed inventory history and valuation view, identifies slow-moving inventory, tracks profitability, and more. Additionally, it lets you tag and identify vendors, add notes to track important vendor information, and offers condition-based alerts.
Shopventory is packed with a host of other features such as a highly-visual dashboard, barcode scanning, invoicing, and integrations with popular platforms like Shopify, Stripe, QuickBooks Online, Amazon Alexa, and more. Don’t miss out on this efficient inventory management solution for your business!
Pricing:
- Shopventory pricing starts at $39/month
7. Katana
Katana is an advanced inventory management software with an emphasis on small manufacturers and business owners. It includes enterprise resource planning (ERP), raw material tracking, production planning, and stock support.
With Katana, you get a centralized dashboard that provides complete visibility over your multi-channel inventory and sales orders, including business-related data such as sales status, warehouse status, low stock alerts, and more. It enables you to manage orders, raw materials, and manufacturing operations across multiple channels while tracking your products and materials at every stage of their lifecycle.
One of the unique features of Katana is its visual interface, which helps you see all aspects of your business in one place. Additionally, Katana offers extensive customer support and integrations with numerous CRM and e-commerce tools, as well as other third-party apps, to streamline your business operations.
Pricing:
- Price starts from $99/month
8. Fishbowl Inventory
Fishbowl Inventory is a top-tier inventory management software that optimizes the manufacturing, distribution, and sales operations of small to medium-sized businesses. Its powerful features allow you to monitor inventory levels, track assets across multiple locations, and receive real-time updates to prevent stockouts.
Fishbowl Inventory also offers advanced accounting systems and FIFO tools, seamlessly integrating with QuickBooks to manage accounting and shipping processes. Additionally, the software stores vendor information for efficient vendor management and generates custom reports to provide a comprehensive view of your business.
With Fishbowl Inventory, you can easily streamline your business operations and keep your inventory levels in check, leading to increased efficiency and profitability. Try Fishbowl Inventory today and experience the benefits of its comprehensive features.
Pricing:
- Offers a one-time payment of $4395
9. Cin7
Looking for an all-in-one inventory management solution that simplifies your business operations? Look no further than Cin7, the cloud-based software that links all your inventory, sales channels, stock locations, and customers in one easy-to-use platform. Whether you’re an e-commerce platform, retailer, or wholesaler, Cin7 has everything you need to streamline your selling process.
Cin7’s proprietary automation platform puts you in control of your inventory and order management, while giving you unparalleled visibility into your stock levels. From inventory tracking to barcode scanning and advanced demand forecasting, Cin7 has you covered.
But that’s not all. Cin7 also offers omnichannel support that syncs multiple channels every five minutes, an integrated POS system, manufacturing features, e-commerce features, and even a payment portal. With Cin7, you can take your business to the next level and streamline your operations like never before.
Pricing:
- Small business plan starts at $299/month
- Business plan starts at $539/month
- Advanced plan starts at $999/month
- Enterprise plan – Contact for pricing
Conclusion
Inventory management software is a necessity for businesses of all sizes, from small retail shops to large enterprises and e-commerce businesses. The benefits of utilizing inventory management software are clear and cannot be ignored. With such software, you can effectively manage and track your inventory, ensuring that you always have the right stock levels to meet customer demand. Don’t delay any longer – implement inventory management software in your business today and experience the benefits for yourself.