If you sell products in your business, you know well that managing inventory is a big job, and it’s tough to find enough hours to do it properly. During busy shopping seasons, keeping up with what you have in stock and replenishing out-of-stock items can be time-consuming. It’s a lot easier to sell products when you have them in stock, so it’s likely that you have experimented with free inventory software. However, the free software falls short of what you need, simple inventory management software that keeps track of inventory for your small business.
Why You Shouldn’t Use Free Inventory Software
Using Excel as Inventory Software
Free inventory management software in Excel is touted as software that doesn’t cost you anything. It’s true that Excel is a free platform that you can track inventory on, but when you consider its use, is it really free? How many labor hours does it take to use Excel in this fashion? How many problems do you have with human error? How well does it scale up as your business grows?
Maybe you started using Excel when your business was new, and you didn’t have a budget for inventory software. But, Excel is no longer cost-effective now that your business is growing. Consider these limits of using Excel.
- Tracking large quantities of items in Excel increases the likelihood of data entry errors, especially if your inventory moves frequently from location to location.
- Having a single Excel workbook limits user access.
- Excel lacks real-time inventory data.
- Excel limits your ability to quickly analyze historical data.
Using Open Source for Inventory Management
If you’re not familiar with Open Source software, it is:
Open source software is different. Its authors make its source code available to others who would like to view that code, copy it, learn from it, alter it, or share it. LibreOffice and the GNU Image Manipulation Program are examples of open source software.
However, using open source software for inventory management is also not ideal for these reasons.
- Uneven software quality due to inadequate resources and training level of contributors.
- Long-term sustainability is difficult to maintain because of open source burnout.
- Software licensing is problematic for distributing out to your users.
- Copyright infringement is highly likely with volunteers and hobbyists as contributors.
- Software security is iffy with no security auditing procedures.
- Software often has weird quirks, bugs, an odd mix of features, a default setup might not work for you.
- You have to know some coding for full functionality.
Best Inventory Software for Small Business
There are several common mistakes that small businesses make with inventory management.
- Spreadsheets become problematic as you scale up
- Uniform stock levels do not support your sales numbers
- Irregular inventory maintenance leads to a reduction in sales
- Ignoring or not being aware of inventory shrinkage
- Lack of dynamic pricing as demand fluctuates
Why Inventory Management is a Challenge for Small Businesses
Small businesses generally don’t have dedicated personnel to manage their inventory, and that can lead to inventory control problems including:
- Not enough stock for orders
- Don’t know stock levels
- Lack of data regarding how long stock is in the warehouse
- No data on stock turnover
- Stored goods not in prime condition
- Inefficient storage and retrieval time
- Packing and shipping is a major supply chain bottleneck
Simple Inventory System For Small Business
As a small business owner, you don’t have time to worry about the nitty-gritty of managing your inventory. You need to operate at peak efficiency to maximize profits and fulfill customer orders in a timely manner as well as run all aspects of your business. It is for this reason that small businesses need inventory management software. This type of software will help you automate your inventory management so you can focus on growing your business.
Benefits of Simple Inventory Management Software
Ordoro was created to help small businesses, and it scales up as your company grows. Our software helps growing merchants operate just like large-scale corporations, but at a fraction of the cost. You can optimize your fulfillment workflows with omnichannel inventory management all in one platform. Benefits are:
- Having accurate knowledge of your inventory
- Plenty of room for your business to grow
- Increased customer satisfaction
How Can Ordoro Help Your Small Business?
Ordoro is designed for omnichannel merchants looking to grow their business. As an all-in-one ecommerce fulfillment platform, Ordoro is ready to scale from as little as 200 to 20,000 orders per month. As you grow, our app is ready to handle everything from shipping, inventory, and order management to reporting and analytics – no more confusion and no more jumping from app to app. Last year, Ordoro helped our customers ship more than 12 million orders all over the world!
Advantages of Barcode Scanners in Inventory Management
Using barcodes to identify your inventory and scanners to record inventory transactions reduces errors in your inventory management. One huge benefit is improved accuracy in fulfilling customer orders. Other benefits are:
- Barcodes are a proven technology
- Data is readily available
- Improvement of inventory control
- Low-cost implementation
- Better decision-making
Advantages of Using an Inventory Management System
Why is Inventory Management So Important?
Inventory management is the foundation on which you build your business. With an organized, efficient inventory system, your supply-chain management is balanced properly. Orders are filled efficiently and on time, and there are no surprises, errors, overstocks, mis-picks, out-of-stocks, or mis-shipments.
It all starts with how you manage your warehouse. If your inventory is on the shelf, labeled correctly, and audited routinely, you eliminate costly errors and keep your customers happy.
Your inventory doesn’t run out, because purchase orders are synced when needed. And you save money on labor hours, time taken to correct mistakes, and processing returns.
What Do You Gain with the Right Software?
Using the best inventory management software for small businesses, you gain a lot. The biggest gain is flexibility. You can grow and change your business, and your software will support you every time.
- You can track inventory across multiple channels
- Automate tasks and improve efficiency
- Use real-time data to analyze your operations
- Improve forecasting
- Make data-driven decisions
- Support uninterrupted production
- Optimize inventory
- Ensure GAAP compliance
- Lower costs of warehouse and insurance
- Automate reordering
- Save on payroll
- Improve billing cycle
Best Inventory Management Software
According to Neil Patel, Ordoro is the best inventory management software for ecommerce. He says:
Ordoro is an all-in-one solution for inventory management and shipping for your ecommerce business.
You can integrate all of your online sales channels, assign barcodes to SKUs, manage purchase orders, and automatically update quantities on fulfillment of orders through the software. It’s designed to handle inventory updates for returned merchandise authorization (RMAs) as well.
Implementing a non-traditional inventory management strategy is also possible with this software. There’s an option to strategically oversell your goods or limit the number of in-stock items visible to your customers to create an illusion of scarcity, encouraging people to place their orders sooner.
We agree. We think you will too.
Want to Learn More about Ordoro?
Are you ready to get started with the right simple inventory management software for ecommerce? Schedule a demo to find out more about how Ordoro can improve your ecommerce inventory management.
