What makes a good Inventory Software?
Imagine you have just opened a small business and want to track your inventory and perhaps sell products. One of the main decisions that you have to make is to choose an Inventory software. The exchange of data and information between suppliers and your company is critical for making business decisions that will improve productivity and reduce unnecessary costs. With a highly scalable software product, you can integrate the inventory control as well as the sale orders with your information systems: These are critical in executing business decisions and improving production. The Best place to find a software is on the web with so many software products to choose from. First you have to find out what your requirements are. Perhaps the best thing to do is to look for a trial version software that will allow you to try all possibilities of the software for your business. As a small business, you are probably on a tight budget: The software prices range from almost free to thousands of dollars. However, you need to find a software that works accurately and is priced reasonably. A well-written software for a Platform of your choice (Microsoft Windows the most popular) has to be user-friendly, easy-to-learn and work well on a Network as well as on a Standalone workstation. It must come with a good Technical Support.
The following list include features that you should look for in an Inventory software.
To only track inventory:
- Items: Manage Items in the inventory.
- An Item must be identified by Item Categories, Default SupplierID, SerialNumber, Cost, Markup, Unit Price, QuantityPerUnit, Units in Stock, Units on Order, Units To Reorder, Reorder Level and more.
- Suppliers: Quickly add Suppliers for Items Purchase Orders.
- Employees: Create an inventory of the company Employees.
- Purchase Orders: Manage your Purchase Orders easily.
- Auto Purchase Order: Automatically create an order to a supplier when the items are low in stock.
- Average cost calculation: A method that recalculates an Item's cost after receiving a Purchase Order. This is done by averaging the actual cost with the cost of the inventory for that Item.
- Receive Purchase Orders: Record received stock for a Purchase Order.
To also sell products and track company customers and sales:
- Customer Information: Track Customers conveniently.
- Customer Payments: Add and track Customer Payments.
- Customer Returns Recording: Quickly record Custmer Returns for reporting purposes.
- Invoices: Manage and track Customer Invoices.
- Shipping and Payment Methods: Include Shipping and Payment Methods in Invoices.
- Shipping: Add Shipping Methods and Freight Charges to Invoices.
Other features include:
- Units Count: The software should provide you with the Units on Order, Units at Hand and low stock Items at all times.
- Reports: - VERY IMPORTANT - Generate convenient and useful reports to manage your business inventory and sales.
- Search Database: Easily find Items, Suppliers, Customers, Purchase Orders, Invoices, etc.
- You should be able to create custom queries with any user-defined criteria.
- Import Text Data: Use a quick wizard to import data from a CSV or fixed-length file.
- Export Data to CSV: Quickly export data from the Inventory to a CSV file.
- Backup Database: Take a backup of the inventory.
- Reset Sales: Reset Invoices including Payments.