To get your business off the ground, you have to make sure that you are choosing your tools carefully. Currently, inventory management is among the most important parts in any retail operation. Thankfully, there are so many inventory management software in the market and most of them come at a reasonable price. However, you have to look at some key features before making a decision. Here are some tips to choose the best inventory management software.
When choosing an inventory management software, you have to make sure that it has all the integrations that your business requires. Integration is basically the ability of interfacing with third party platforms. There is an endless list of add-ons but there are some categories that you have to make sure that the inventory management software supports.
The first one is ecommerce and your plan should support doing business through online markets like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon among others. The inventory management software should integrate with all these channels before you pull the trigger.
Some merchants handle their sales vial the shopping cart such as Lemonstand, Volusion, and Shopify that is incorporated into the website directly. Integration with the shopping cart allows users to sync sales information, stock, and orders between your inventory management software and cart seamlessly.
If you have a plugin for the accounting software, you will not have to import your sales data manually each time you wish to have a look at the books. Besides, you may want to use a software-based shipping solution such as ShippingEasy or ShipStation. Proper integration with shipping allows you to send shipping information easily from the inventory management software in a click of a button.
The next integration is payment processing that supports payment portals like Stripe, PayPal, and Square. It makes things convenient for both your customers and brand. Most software companies advertise integrations as one of their key features. You have to choose an inventory management software that supports third party integrations.
For Beauty and Fashion Write For Us you can send blogs at aclassblogs@gmail.com
You could be having a company that produces multiple versions of the same item. For instance, cloth manufacturers can have various sizes and colors of a dress shirt. In such a case, you will need a software that supports the variants. Not all the inventory management software offers this and you have to consider when shopping around. Also look for the ability of specifying various categories like wholesale and retail just in case your company needs this.
The ability to store contacts is among the most useful features in the best inventory management software. It allows you to index and quickly recall suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, vendors, and customers whenever a need arises.
Some software packages allow users to upload and even store documents for every contact like resale licenses, invoices, and purchase orders. It becomes very easy to find them on future. Contact management is a very powerful feature as it streamlines the company’s inventory end. Therefore, you have to make sure that it is part of your solutions.
Companies nowadays heavily rely on Analytics and Reports more to evaluate their current position and where they are heading to. The best inventory management software should have robust reports and analytics tools that you can access easily and are easy to understand.
To be particular, the ability of creating custom reports is useful. When crunching thousands of rows of data, you may want to trim the fat and focus on valuable variables. The best inventory management software should have this functionality at no extra cost.
So many business startups overlook this category. When shopping for an inventory management software, you need to consider your needs from the support point or view. A good software will support accounting, receive e-mail only support, 24/7 turnaround times, live support and phone calls. You have to be comfortable with all the support options.
The other important thing is the support hours. Most entrepreneurs are busy during the day running their businesses and leave secondary tasks like software configuration and setup for late evening or early morning. If the customer services of your provider are only during the week days and working hours, you will face a problem.
Also look at whether the provider outsources customer service or not. Most customers prefer getting support from a team that is locally based in their region. If you prefer this, make sure you confirm with the sales agents before buying the inventory management software.
The ability to create custom views is the other valuable feature in the best inventory management software. With custom views, you will be able to create a workspace that only display the information that you specify and lays it out in a manner that makes a lot of sense to you. It is a highly sought-after feature in the pro-grade applications because they add enormous benefits to your efficiency and workflow. If you will be spending a lot of time om the inventory management software, custom views are crucial.
Depending on the type of business that you run, the inventory management software should support multiple locations. For instance, if you have both a warehouse and storefront, you will want to differentiate between these two locales. If not, things will become confusing and you can become bogged down while trying to create an ad hoc workaround within your software.
You may have discovered that we have not addressed the element of cost in this writeup. It is something that you will make a decision as you continue to shop around. However, make sure you are getting the quality for your purchase. You can still get a feature-rich inventory management software at a low price. These are the tips to choose the best inventory management software that you need to know. Take time to evaluate the various features against the pricing. Happy Hunting for your inventory management software!
Forward your blog for Write For Us Business Niche at aclassblogs@gmail.com