In need of good inventory management software

[GuestUser140]

Hi guys,

We sell used consumer electronics amongst other things.

I like simplicity.

Until now, I've always used two Excel files:

1. A general table with all the stock in it (with serial number, purchase price, date, ...)

Only the columns "sale price", "sale date", "invoice number" and "customer name" are empty and need to be filed out when something is sold.

2. A blank invoice template.

When something is sold, I (or my employee) simply fills out the 4 empty fields in table 1. Takes no time.
Then she copies the line of that specific item from table 1, and pastes it into the invoice.

Print and done.

Variation: save as PDF, upload to cloud, done.

At the end of the month, we do a stock count.
She scans the physical stock and emails me the barcodes. I check in table one whether all the empty fields correspond to a scanned barcode (=whether an item is indeed in stock). I do that manually. (About 100 barcodes which takes 15 min.)

Am I doing too much work? Can it be done more efficient?


Best,

Michael

 

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[Trivium iz rC]

I have a couple partnerships in ecommerce & we have a couple of warehouses. Checkout ShiperHero its a mobile WMS for ecommerce.

Very happy with them the people who created the software are also E-commerce sellers so it works great.

 

[GuestUser140]

Hey thanks for the reply, do you have a link? Google can't find it.

Checkout ShiperHero

 

[Trivium iz rC]

http://www.shiphero.com/

glad to help

 

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[Jon L]

My business is to automate stuff like this with custom software, so I know a little bit about this.

If you're truly only spending this amount of time with your current system, and its working for you, don't complicate it with more software. Any other software you use will take more time than what you're spending now.

When you get to the point where you're starting to have problems like the following, packaged or custom software is called for:

*You're losing inventory
*You're losing or messing-up orders
*You're spending $1000's per month looking for orders or inventory or both
*You don't have a good handle on what's happening in your business because your reports are unreliable, or they're too time consuming to produce.

 

[harryvent]

I have some experiences in inventory management, past year I worked in the warehouse my position is record all incoming and outgoing stock details. For inventory purpose they use Apptivo, I can easily manage all stock details without burden with help of this software.

 

[konflikted]

Michael,

Your process seems easy enough at this point especially your "POS" process. You only need to ask yourself the following questions.

1. Can your current process scale if you add 10x inventory or 5 more employees? <-- If so keep using it until you surpass this then ask the question again.
2. How much time would it save you and your staff to "automate" your month end?
a. To elaborate on question 2. If you used a non excel based system or customize your current excel based system you could have each Sale remove the product from inventory manually and could utilize either barcode readers or include QR codes to automate the update of your "Database" when your employee scans it making your part in the process much quicker/easier to accomplish as it would be reviewing a system generated report rather than manually keying in any updates.

Currently your answers to the above will be your driving force to support an affirmative decision. If your process is K.I.S.S then keep it that way until for efficiency's sake you must make a change.

TL/DR

Yes you are doing too much but if it isn't hard and it works then it is relative and who cares.
Yes it can be more efficient however, there is an upfront cost... Wait but don't wait until it is too late, make small efficiency improvements as time goes by. First step look into automating your month end process.

I currently work for a company who's ME process has gone from 6 days to 3 and we are all happier for it.

 

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[John BAkiko]

That isn`t so much work, but, of course, it can be done a lot easier. There are lots of ERP`s with inventory functions over there which + can automatically create invoices for you and a big amount of them is free. Sure thing you can stick with such giants like Odoo, Stitchlabs or TradeGecko but those cost a lot. I have found for myself one called EasyERP, mainly because it is free and I have a small reselling business, so my budget is pretty tight.
I, myself, was using Excell, but, as previous contributors said a little automatization won`t do a harm.