The Shopify Inventory Management App offers many features that simplify your inventory control process. This enables shop owners to add more time in their schedule to focus on other important facets of their businesses. If you have a Shopify website and are thinking of using Shopify inventory management software to track your inventory, here is a guide to help you better understand the benefits and limits of the Shopify inventory management app. Let’s break down the app’s features.
Benefits of Shopify Inventory Management
There are good reasons that retailers like Shopify, because the app offers several benefits for users. These benefits are:
- Controls inventory so that you don’t run out of stock, overstock, or sell stock you don’t have. Stock issues can put you over budget, cause cash flow issues, and downgrade your company’s reputation.
- Ensures a smooth cash flow, so you don’t neglect any other part of your business. If inventory management is running tickety boo, your customers are happy, and you avoid high-stress levels for you and your staff.
- Helps you sell on and manage multiple channels. Many retailers are finding that they need to sell on multiple channels to maximize their revenue. However, this can confuse stock issues and upset your inventory control.
- Gives you the data you need to make sales predictions. Knowing ahead what is selling, and what isn’t allows you to order the right amount of materials to manufacture and/or stock the right amount of inventory for your retail sales. Stock levels normally move up and down, but now you can understand the patterns, and order materials accordingly.
- Hands complete control over your inventory to you, including tracking multiple variations to your standard stock items.
Challenges of Shopify Inventory Management
Although the Shopify inventory management app has significant benefits, there are some challenges that you should be aware of. The challenges are:
- Product integration is limited because some products don’t integrate into Shopify, meaning added time to control these products manually. Since one of the reasons you are using Shopify is to control your inventory, this can be a problematic situation.
- Ordoro can solve this issue with full integration of all your Shopify stores and other sales channels, to manage orders and inventory.
- Ordoro offers easy management and order processing software for online merchants. Ordoro is a one-stop-shop for inventory control, shipping, order management, and dropshipping.
- Automated restocking can have more errors as you scale up your operation. This necessitates manual inventory oversight so you don’t have stock overruns or shortages.
- Ordoro eliminates this problem with added vendor portals to initiate automation and streamline your inventory workflow.
- Limited multichannel analysis leads to gaps in channel performance statistics needed for prediction and management of your operation. When you add channels to your sales strategy, the goal is to analyze which channels perform for your company, and which don’t. Then you can streamline your operation to focus on successful channels.
- Ordoro solves this problem with the capability to connect all sales channels, providing a comprehensive view of your inventory.
Important Features to Look for in a Shopify Inventory Management Software
1. Real-Time Inventory Tracking
Of course, this is the basic function of inventory management. If your inventory app can’t supply this basic function, it’s not worth your time considering. Tracking includes management of how sales orders, vendor replenishment, warehouse transfers, production reserves (for manufacturers), and consignment stock affect your inventory.
2. Real-Time Inventory Value
It’s not enough to know what you have in inventory, you also need to know the inventory’s value. This includes variation in pricing, where your stock is (which warehouse, etc.), multi-currency support (if you sell in other countries), tracking the value of variable costs, grouping products for accounting, and a live view of your profit margin as it changes 24/7.
3. Shopify Low Stock Alert and Reordering
A Shopify low-stock alert is necessary to maintain your inventory levels and fulfill all your orders on time. You also need a daily report so you can do your ordering all at one time.
4. Purchasing and Supplier Management
When your inventory control is maintained correctly, then you can also manage purchasing and the suppliers you deal with. The best Shopify inventory management apps will have these purchasing functions.
- Generate and automatically populate your purchase orders
- Store complete vendor details in a central, easy-to-access location
- Figure in all vendor discounts for bulk or quantity when ordering
- Clear transaction history for every supplier
- Capability to receive partial shipments from vendors
5. No Limit to SKUs
This is a gimme. No limits for SKUs are a must.
6. All the Reports You Need
You already know what reports you need to control your inventory, but here is a partial list:
- Inventory turnover rate
- Average days to sell
- Age of stock
- Backorder rate
- Unit sales
- Profit margin
How to Manage Inventory with Shopify
Shopify has a list of tips to help you manage your inventory whether you run a mom-and-pop store or larger business with several stores using their app that shows store inventory. They are:
1. Categorize Inventory by Price Point, Turnover, Profitability
Categorize your inventory to determine the most profitable mix of stock for your unique business. Maximize high profit, high turnover stock to prioritize your inventory groups.
Shopify has its own inventory management tool that allows you to track inventory, add and remove SKUs, and create purchase orders. You can also get a third-party inventory management app, like Ordoro, for additional features that help organize and sync data directly from your Shopify or Shopify Plus account into one central, convenient system.
Shopify recommends starting with these categories.
- Group A: Low-priced items that sell fast
- Group B: Mid-priced items that move slower
- Group C: High-priced items that sell the slowest
2. Audit Inventory Regularly
Running regular audits on your inventory helps keep it accurate, so you have no stock surprises when customers order. You’ll have to determine how often and what to audit.
3. Review Supplier Performance
A poor-performing supplier can knock your inventory off balance, and upset your customers with long lead times and being out of stock. These problems affect your reputation and percentage of repeat business.
4. Only Have a Single Inventory Manager
With a large operation, it’s beneficial to have one person controlling your inventory. They can delegate tasks to other people, but oversee the entire process of inventory control, resulting in a more accurate inventory count.
5. Make Customers Your Priority
Customers are what keep you in business, and having them come back and refer new customers should be your primary goal. If they are happy, they will let everyone know. Conversely, if they are unhappy, the word will also spread quickly.
6. Invest in Inventory Management Technology
Investing in the best Shopify inventory management software is the bottom line for smooth and easy control of your inventory. While you browse the options: Shopify has some inventory capabilities, Shopify app store, and other Shopify apps — they might not be enough for your operation.
The Best Inventory Management Software for Shopify
Clearly, you need to have the best inventory management software for Shopify to maximize your profits, and Shopify enable multi-location inventory for your business. Ordoro is the best Shopify order app on the market today. Ordoro’s inventory management system picks up where Shopify has challenges. Ordoro offers many features and benefits, including:
- Shipping
- Inventory management
- Dropshipping
- Multichannel markets
- Business analytics
- Kitting
- Reduces inventory errors
- Setting low-stock alerts
Ordoro offers you all the features and benefits without any problematic issues with controlling your inventory on the Shopify website and Shopify mobile app. To learn more about how Ordoro can make your inventory control so much easier schedule your demo.
