Can any body recommend a good inventory management software

[Zucomo]

Hi Everyone.

I am new here and this is my very first post. We have started selling on ebay,amazon and the website is on its way. We have been searching for a good inventory/stock management software for a long time. But it is confusing. We was looking into Bright pearl as it handles all of your stocks and multichannel sales plus the accounts. After reading the reviews and finding out about the bugs here, we have change mind. Currently we have everything on spreadsheet and it is a hustle keeping the record updated and very time consuming. Is there any other programs that we can use for accounts and stock management.

I like to thank you in advance for your time.

Regards

 

[benb]

I use linnworks which is pretty good

 

[Magento Mage Solution]

DiCentral has a new product called DiOMS that might be what you're looking for. It can integrate with any of the standard ERPs but also can integrate with Quickbooks. It's got EDI built in, incase you're trying to communicate with Trading partners etc. you can find more info at Dicentral.com.

 

[SellerExpress Ltd]

Hi Zucomo, take a look at a free trial with sellerexpress.com. The support guys will be happy to answer any questions and there are no setup fees. In fact there's a free managed setup for new customers.

 

[nationwidetp]

Hi,

We use unleashed which integrates very well with our ecommerce site (Magento) and our accounts package (Xero)..

 

[Zucomo]

Hi, Thank you all for your inputs, i am still can't make our minds on seller express and Linnworks, any recommendations, we had a look at store feeder and they are really expensive at £250 p/m.
Thank you guys

 

[titanicuk]

If you are starting out, why not try linnworks, it is cheap and powerful.

 

[antropy]

There are 2 really good solutions out there:

1. Linnworks - which syncs stock levels and manages orders between Amazon, eBay and your website, many platforms supported including OpenCart.
   http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/linnworks-and-opencart/
   http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/managing-online-orders-in-one-place/
   
   
2. OpenBay Pro - which syncs stock levels, manages orders and automatically lists products (and removes them when out of stock) on both channels and also Play.com.
   http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/latest-opencart-1-5-6-connects-to-ebay-amazon-and-play/
   

 

[Linn Systems]

Hi Zucomo,

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding our Linnworks product.

You can import your whole inventory from your spreadsheet into Linnworks by converting the excel sheet into CSV.file then once you have mapped the inventory to your channel Linnworks will control your listings inventory levels.

Our system is highly configurable and suits all types of businesses from small start up company's to large corporate businesses.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

 

[Tradebox]

Hi

Tradebox integrates eBay, Amazon and websites into Sage Accounts which will provide you with stock control, order management and account for every sale automatically.

We also work with other solutions such as Linnworks, if you would prefer to use an alternative tool for the stock control and order management and use Tradebox for the Sage data entry.

Happy to answer any questions.

Regards


Stephen

 

[Dan Healthcare4all]

I'm a big fan of Linnworks, and there's quite a few fans here on UKBF.
They are fantastic at support and we can't manage without the software.
We also use Tradebox (with Sage) and Stephen and his team are excellent at customer support too.

 

[TPH1]

I'm a big fan of Linnworks, and there's quite a few fans here on UKBF.
They are fantastic at support and we can't manage without the software.
We also use Tradebox (with Sage) and Stephen and his team are excellent at customer support too.

You mention that you use Tradebox/sage with Linnworks. How does that work out for you?

We've been using Linnworks for nearly 3 years, and the business is now at the point that it needs a good accountancy system and so we'll probably use Sage. The problem is, Linnworks really doesn't integrate with Sage... Tradebox will export and import sales, but that's it! The fundemental problems are:

1. You can't synchronize inventory levels between Sage/Linnworks. I'm not sure how you can use Sage properly if you don't have your inventory/stock levels within Sage, but manually syncronizing the two inventory levels would surely be impossible.

2. Refunds and eBay/Amazon fees will not be picked up by sage. Without this part of the integration, how can your Sage records be up to date at any point other than when you manually update them each month?


I really want to stick with Linnworks, but it looks like I might have to change to the far more expensive eseller

 

[Zucomo]

Hi Guys

Thank you for your replies, is it well appreciated. Okey sounds like for us its going to be Linnworks and Sage, but i am confused with what tph1 has mentioned about syncing stock levels between Linnworks and Tradebox which is very important to us. How can we work around this and lets just say we have refunded or customer returned an order, which we can do with linnworks, but how would this transaction will reflect on sage. Would Tradebox pull this information into sage and update stock levels and will this reflect on the account balance.

 

[TPH1]

Purchase invoices would also surely prove to be a nightmare without inventory levels synchronized as you'd have to manage them from two places at once...

I really hope that someone from Linnworks or someone will else will come here and reply with a solution, but I don't think they can to be honest.

 

[GraemeL]

Linnworks gets my vote. Suggest that you do not worry as much about accounting as the stock management and integration with Amazon etc.

You can easily export invoices from Linnworks into a spreadsheet.

I have not found any small accounting system that can handle the reverse VAT accounting and Amazon payment reconciliation without a lot of manual input. Takes as much time as just using a spreadsheet.

G

 

[kulture]

I agree, use Linnworks or equivalent for what it is best for, if order processing and stock control across multiple sales channels. Forget about the accounts interface. I actually run every sale through a till, and every return/refund).Takes seconds and has a 100% audit trail. Saves hours reconciling and sorting out hiccups and interface nightmares.

 

[TPH1]

I agree, use Linnworks or equivalent for what it is best for, if order processing and stock control across multiple sales channels. Forget about the accounts interface. I actually run every sale through a till, and every return/refund).Takes seconds and has a 100% audit trail. Saves hours reconciling and sorting out hiccups and interface nightmares.

But what do you mean "forget the accounts and interface"? I'm not so sure the inland revenue would approve of that attitude.

 

[GraemeL]

"forget the accounts and interface"

You have misread kultures' sensible comment, which actually says 'Forget about the accounts interface' not as you misquote.

G

 

[TPH1]

Apologies for that but regardless, my own first post in this thread still stands I am unable to ignore the accounts interface.

Will probably make my own thread later.

 

[GraemeL]

Regardless, my first post in this thread still stands I am unable to ignore the accounts interface.

OK. I would be genuinely interested to know of any accounting system that can handle Amazon accounting without a lot of manual intervention. (That's without even considering the complexities of inventory.)

If manual intervention is needed, there is little value in an interface.

G

 

[TPH1]

OK. I would be genuinely interested to know of any accounting system that can handle Amazon accounting without a lot of manual intervention. (That's without even considering the complexities of inventory.)

If manual intervention is needed, there is little value in an interface.

G

I think you're right that without spending a huge amount of money on a bespoke system, manual invention will be required at several points when accounting for a multichannel eccomerce business.

However I don't agree with your second statement. If I could at the very least integrate my purchase invoices into one place, it would save me a huge amount of time, reduce the chance of mistakes, and improve overall buying efficiency which would allow me to notice things that would improve buying decisions.

The more you have automated, the closer you can get your P/L and cashflow reports to being accurate in real time. This can't be overlooked if you want your business to reach it's full potential.

 

[veeqo]

Just to add to the ones suggested already:

• Stichlabs.com
• ordoro.com
• veeqo.com << Disclaimer, this is me.

I don't think any of these integrate with Sage.

I do think ecommerce accounting is a really difficult thing to do at the moment, ideally what we want is real time accounting info, so you can see P&L for current week/month and compare to previous periods.

 

[iKam]

We leave the accounting to something called accountants. Yes it costs money, they do a much better job for us, and better yet most know how to file your accounts in the best of yours and your companies favour financially wise.

 

[TPH1]

We leave the accounting to something called accountants. Yes it costs money, they do a much better job for us, and better yet most know how to file your accounts in the best of yours and your companies favour financially wise.

We're talking about an eccomerce business, not a self employed carpenter. Some people pay a little more attention to the financial side of their business than to give your accountant a big box of invoices at the end of the year and say "There you go! Great, now I can tick of accounting for the year".

It's amazing that there is no proper ecommerce accounts software yet... Gap in the market for anyone with the knowledge or resource?

 

[veeqo]

It's about getting accurate and up to date information quickly, less about filing your annual accounts.

So what is your gross margin on website sales last week? How did that compare to last year? Is the gross margin on your Amazon worth the it with the fees?

For me I think the crucial element is getting the gross profit calculated accurately, as that drives everything else. But this can be tricky as you might buy the same product at different prices throughout the year and from different suppliers.

While Veeqo is not ecommerce accounting, we do manage your gross profit and track cost prices and enable you to see your gross profit per sales channel. We then intend to integrate with a good cloud based accounting system like Xero or Freeagent to feed it up to date and accurate COGS and sales data.

It's an interesting idea to develop an accounting package just for ecommerce customers though..... I like it!

 

[GraemeL]

We recommend LoMag software, an inventory management program meeting the needs of companies running warehouses. Uniquely intuitive, LoMag generates documents such as goods receipt/issue note, correction, inventory – the full list of types of generated documents, as well as other functions of warehouse software created by Longint may be found on www. lomag . eu

And you use this - or you are connected with it?
It doesn't look much like an inventory management program to me.
G

 

[Pish_Pash]

In particular, Amazon -> accounts software is truly a mess (it astonishes me with all their might & clout, they have without a shadow of a doubt the most convoluted order & payment system I'm ever likely to encounter!). Having spent waaaay too much time trying to reconcile orders/payments exactly - I've given up ...as long as my accounts software figures are very close to what Amazon is showing (payments & fees), then that'll do for now!

I use Quickbooks ...not ideal, but cheap (which is hard to overlook when you're still at the embryonic stage & everyone wants a piece of you). Yes it needs a degree of manual intervention, but to be truthful I think a degree of manual intervention is probably a good thing when it comes to importing transactions en-masse into accounts software ...the last thing I'd want is to have to pick the bones out of an automated method having realised had issues after importing a few months of transactions!

Another thumbs up for Linnworks for inventory though..

 

[Martinly Tran]

I would recommend our Inventory Management which allows you to upload products to backend and then keep track of them: which supplier a product comes from and which warehouse it belongs, etc. In that way, it helps eliminate common mistakes arising when you transfer stocks among warehouses and from warehouses to customers.

 

[SimonGNoBlue]

Hi, I am new to the forum but wanted to share my thoughts.
I have spoken to a lot of people who have recently moved from Sage to NetSuite, and from what I can tell, NetSuite also does exactly the same as Linnworks and more besides. I guess ultimately the choice is down to the budget available to you, whether you are happy with all the solutions available, such as cloud offerings and whether your chosen solution will also grow with your business needs.

I would also say that for any smaller business, being able to build a relationship with a supplier/vendor is crucial, so if you trust someone, stick with them.

I do have information about NetSuite available so if it is of interest, please do let me know and I am happy to share, but don't want to inflict it upon everyone.

 

[Jack@GillespieBS]

We're talking about an eccomerce business, not a self employed carpenter. Some people pay a little more attention to the financial side of their business than to give your accountant a big box of invoices at the end of the year and say "There you go! .

It's amazing that there is no proper ecommerce accounts software yet... Gap in the market for anyone with the knowledge or resource?

As eCommerce accountants, I'd certainly agree, it is much more reassuring when a client can understand and get value from their own data, than as you say "Great, now I can tick off accounting for the year".

We are accounting partners of Brightpearl, which as well as being a good inventory management software, has a built in accounting function suitable for eCommerce. We work with lots of eCommerce clients who use Brightpearl and gain value from being able to see up to date financial data.

You can find out more from our partner page http://www.gillespiebs.co.uk/brightpearl

Jack

 

[Cloudcandy Sales]

In my opinion salesbabu is too good.

 

[James.C]

There really isn't too much of difference between the leading inventory management software available on the market but here are my top five Sellsy Stock, Finale Inventory, NetSuite Inventory Management, GoCodes and finally Brightpearl.

 

[is&s]

Hi Everyone.

I am new here and this is my very first post. We have started selling on ebay,amazon and the website is on its way. We have been searching for a good inventory/stock management software for a long time. But it is confusing. We was looking into Bright pearl as it handles all of your stocks and multichannel sales plus the accounts. After reading the reviews and finding out about the bugs here, we have change mind. Currently we have everything on spreadsheet and it is a hustle keeping the record updated and very time consuming. Is there any other programs that we can use for accounts and stock management.

I like to thank you in advance for your time.

Regards

I would highly recommend to try StarCode Lite or Pro. Very inexpensive and it provides all the required functionality. Installs in simple few clicks and ready to use after install. You can download it from CNET or Softpedia. Try a google search on StarCode Lite or Pro.

It is available for both Windows and Android. You can run it on Android tablets as well.

 

[Pish_Pash]

I would highly recommend to try StarCode Lite or Pro. Very inexpensive and it provides all the required functionality. Installs in simple few clicks and ready to use after install. You can download it from CNET or Softpedia. Try a google search on StarCode Lite or Pro.

It is available for both Windows and Android. You can run it on Android tablets as well.

Your first post & you're touting an app that has 17 downloads on CNET (& from what i can see from the screenshots doesn't cater for the OP's requirements).

If you sell on Ebay & Amazon & your own website...then e-commerce 'nirvana' is to have a system that 'go fetches' all your sales orders (from all you online marketplaces), deducts the associated sold stock from your inventory, prints out invoices & labels (i.e. for those orders you have to pack yourself), then squirts out the end data into an accountancy software package ...to the best of my knowledge, Brightpearl is the only package that does all those steps, but it'll cost you handsomely....especially if you have many sales channels (& there appears to be more than a fair share of disgruntled Brightpearl users about)...

A better alternative is Linnworks, but it only does 80% of the above....so, you need to tag on an accounts software (& then probably a 'joining' third party app to map the data & 'add in' extra data required by your accountancy software.... exchange rates etc)

I gave up searching (working on the principle that even if I find something, the associated cost will turn me into an grumpy old man & even then, there'll be some aspect that I need tweaked ....& then I'm in the hands of the developers *if* they'll even give me what i need), my path is as follows...

Linnworks -> MS Access (this is where I add in all my required features) -> Transaction Pro Importer -> Quickbooks.

So at the end of each day I have every sale in my acounts software....but here's the gotcha......Amazon can take a while between taking an order & providing you with the complete sales data......they can lag about 3-4 days behind (what I mean is you can't be confident that you have all your Amazon sales data until about 4 days has elapsed) - so you can never truly have 'real time' sales into your accounts software....but you can have 'last week' last month etc.

Not perfect, but works for me.

 

[is&s]

Your first post & you're touting an app that has 17 downloads on CNET (& from what i can see from the screenshots doesn't cater for the OP's requirements).


Not perfect, but works for me.

I have just checked from CNET website. Lite version has 107 and Pro has 27 downloads. So your quoted figure of 17 is wrong!. Number of downloads should not be the only benchmark for software selection in my opinion.

 

[Pish_Pash]

I was looking at the pro (& it said 17 downloads)...my point been there's more than a strong whiff of self promotion about your advice (first post, recommending an app that's unknown etc) - with such a low number of downloads that app is not well embraced.

 

[is&s]

I was looking at the pro (& it said 17 downloads)...my point been there's more than a strong whiff of self promotion about your advice (first post, recommending an app that's unknown etc) - with such a low number of downloads that app is not well embraced.

You are stressing too much on the "first post". You had the first post as well when you joined forum? You have not even installed and tried the features and made very strong opinion just looking at "my first post".

It might be useful for lot of people reading this forum. If it is no use to you then it is perfectly fine.

 

[Pish_Pash]

Are you related to the product? (it seems so, if so you should really decalre it in your opening gambit)....your post was so generic, to be almost worthless... boiling it down ....

"download & try & it because it meets everyone's requirement & I'm saying it's good - trust me, even though this is my first post"

Typically these apps take a while to configure/tweak to each persons own particular situation....so such a post could be quite wasteful of others' time (i.e. if it transpires it doesn't meet their requirements after all)

We're all here to help one another & share info that makes us better (or more efficient) at what we do.

why is it so good that makes you recommend it?...does it connect automatically to ebay & Amazon? (if you read the OP's requirements, he sells on ebay & Amazon)....how will it save him time, what make it unique in an ever crowded marketplace (what other similar apps have you tried & passed by in favour of the one you're recommending...and why) & so on....

 

[Jayser100]

I use Wasp Inventory Control along with their D10 scanner - not the cheapest solution, but brilliant kit, a sound investment. It can handle small to very large and complex inventory systems, so it will grow with you. It will integrate with Quickbooks too.

 

[Keithy]

GraemeL

We've been using A2X (Amazon to Xero) to automatically send our Amazon disbursements to Xero. Once set-up you can make it post these invoices automatically. Had work on auto for about 2 months now without a hitch.
The other great thing if you have sales crossing a month on the disbursment it seperates these out so your VAT is reported correctly. This has saved tons of time.