Online stock management.

[Justin Cyder]

Looking for a bit of PH wisdom.

We've a client for whom we manage distribution of a large volume but small number of lines to supermarkets. The stock is in pallet quantities and is held in a third party warehouse in the north of England. The warehouse isn't sophisticated & keeps records with excel. Although it's accurate enough, the set up is unsatisfactory in that they report the stock levels to me & I pass it on to the client.

I'm looking for some kind of simple-ish online/cloud system where the warehouse can update the inventory position in real time such that both I & the client can access it whenever required. It really is a matter of pallets in & out, no more than four or five lines managed on FIFO and that is about it. Looking around, there appears to be a bewildering array of sophisticated packages that offer way more than we require, so I'm looking for any recommendations that I can explore further, ta.

[anonymous-user]

would it be fixed by something as simple as swapping the excel sheet for a shared google docs sheet (that the client could login to), along with an SLA about how often the sheet is to be updated (i.e. after every movement)

[Justin Cyder]

Movements are daily, so stock in & receipted followed by stock picked & despatched - leading to a single update by which I mean the client needs to understand the stock position once a day only & specifically not hourly etc. We've thought about making a sheet available in the cloud, but since the spend is in the tens of thousands per week, I think the onus is on us to provide something with a slicker front end even though I concede we probably don't need it.

[anonymous-user]

Sounds like it might need an online spreadsheet with some coloured cells and maybe even a graph showing the last couple of week's stock level !