Inventory Management Software

[MrSparks]

Is anyone using any inventory management softwares in their business?

I'm reluctant to spend a fortune each month on Linnworks or similar. It's great for inventory but I couldn't get on with it for anything else... I don't think it really warrants spending £150 / mo just for some stock reports.

We already use M2E pro to update channels and centralise orders, we use ShipTheory to link to DPD and CarryTheOne for accounts integration. Works great and doesn't cost a lot.

The only part I'm struggling with is stock.... I want to know how much value £££ of stock I have at any given point and a monthly report to see my stock value change from previous month.

All the software I'm finding online is either way over the top or just a bit rubbish.

Aside from creating my own database, is there any simple software out there that does the above? I don't mind paying a bit, but not looking to spend fortunes on it as it's a pretty simple requirement. Open to a decent Magento module solution as well if they exist...

Not bothered about CRM/Accounts/Channel Management/etc.. I just want basic single warehouse stock management, we'll do a monthly stock take and expect a report.. that's all!

Any recommendations welcomed!

[PugwasHDJ80]

I used to suggest Orderwise, but they seem to have lost their way a little bit

If you want functional, reliable and neffective, but aren't fussed as to whether its on the cloud you could have a look at http://www.macs-software.co.uk/

[Mudgey]

TradeGecko may be worth looking at, it integrates with Magento but not eBay, as you have M2E that's irrelevant anyway. I used to use it but had to abandon ship for Linnworks after it took a week to resolve an issue, there we're no phone contact back then and so I went with Linnworks. In some ways Linnworks is a step backwards especially for manual order processing for customers over the phone or walk in, but at least I can pick up the phone and they crack on with sorting out the issues.

[STURBO]

Surely magento or m2e pro have such a report? Do they not track qoh and cost.?

A simple export to excel of sku, qoh and item cost is all you need, or do you need more than that?

[ModernAndy]

If your business is at the stage where you can't take care of stock management yourself then you are probably much better off paying the money (even if it does look a bit steep) and concentrating on making more sales than working on a system yourself which will probably be a lot clunkier and time consuming (unless your offering is very simple and doesn't include bundled items). £150 is ball park for a beginner's package for a stock management system.

[MrSparks]

STURBO said:

Surely magento or m2e pro have such a report? Do they not track qoh and cost.?

A simple export to excel of sku, qoh and item cost is all you need, or do you need more than that?

You'd have thought so but you can't enter cost prices and can't (as far as I'm aware) print stock value reports or movement reports.

[MrSparks]

ModernAndy said:

If your business is at the stage where you can't take care of stock management yourself then you are probably much better off paying the money (even if it does look a bit steep) and concentrating on making more sales than working on a system yourself which will probably be a lot clunkier and time consuming (unless your offering is very simple and doesn't include bundled items). £150 is ball park for a beginner's package for a stock management system.

I'm at the stage where it'd be really, really handy to know everything properly with easy to use software, but not quite fully warranting £150 just on stock software.

I think you are right though, it might be a case of just going with Linnworks and concentrating on selling more.

Does anyone use Linnworks? Can you get decent templates so all the invoices/packing slips don't look like they're from the 1990's?

Linnworks should be really good, but there are so many things it doesn't do, that it really should do.

You have to pay extra to take payments in the system, no KashFlow integrations, can't copy and paste easily from the order form. Dropshipping isn't all that easy either. I can't figure out how to actually do stock adjustments or a stock take. If you manually edit the inventory grid it doesn't affect the stock cost.

TradeGecko looks and works a lot better but the support puts me off, it doesn't take payments (unless you use their own system now) and you can't drop ship anything at all.

Zoho Inventory looks like it does everything a bit better BUT it's very clunky and you have to pay £30 per Magento integration, it doesn't support Amazon UK either.

When will someone make some software that ticks all the right boxes and doesn't cost an arm and a leg? surely there is a gap in the market here for small to mid online retailers who do a mix of own stock and dropshipping.

Everything available right now only covers 60% of requirements one way or another. Where I've got Magento covering 60% of everything as well at a much lower cost it seems a lot harder to justify spending a lot of cash to get a different 60% of requirements.

[48k]

MrSparks said:

When will someone make some software that ticks all the right boxes and doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

I've sent you a PM as I may have an option for you.

[STURBO]

MrSparks said:

STURBO said:

Surely magento or m2e pro have such a report? Do they not track qoh and cost.?

A simple export to excel of sku, qoh and item cost is all you need, or do you need more than that?

You'd have thought so but you can't enter cost prices and can't (as far as I'm aware) print stock value reports or movement reports.

Well a simple no cost solution would be:

Initial Setup:
Export from Magento list of SKU's into Excel Document.
Fill in item costs in a new column. Call this Sheet "SKU Costs" Can use other colums such as category, brand etc if that info is useful.

To do monthly stock valuation report.
export SKU's and QOH from on line store.
Put these in a another sheet in the excel document. Use Vlookup to get item costs.
Hey presto you have stock valuation. Can even filter by brand etc if you use those fields too. Will take 5 minutes a month.

Cost zero.