What inventory system do you use?

[shillub]

Hi everyone, just joined the forum and couldn't wait to ask a question. We are in the process of choosing an inventory system and so far can only think of Stone Edge, it has a fair price (3K) and it seems to be just what we need. But I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this system or any other system that would recommend. I would much rather choose a "cloud" system that would give us more flexibility to work from anywhere and I'm in constant scare of computers crashing and having to reinstall software (has happened twice already).

Here are our details, I welcome all suggestions:

Process 1000 orders per month from Ebay/Volusion store, currently using Shipworks and Volusion's built in inventory management.

We definitely want to use bar code scanners very soon, which is why a system that supports scanners is very helpful.

Thank you all for your help.

[ssgumby]

Here is my opinion, unless you pay a fortuned you are not going to find much. We tried stone edge and was horribly disappointed. It was old, clunk, written on an access db, horribly slow and had lots of issues.

We ended up writing our own in house, doesnt have all the bells and whistles but gets the job done.

[shillub]

That was exactly what I was worried about, it just looks old and on access. Hopefully I can get some good suggestions, we definitely need a system one way or the other.

[mattb]

We also wrote our own. We know of one competitor that uses Netsuite. Not sure of the details but it looks like you can rent different modules to fit your needs.

[shillub]

We have never really considered doing something custom, specially since we don't have a programmer on staff. It seems that finding something affordable and good is almost impossible. Do you guys how much it would cost for a programmer to create it? Thank you for your responses.

[jwolthuis]

We use Microsoft Retail Management System to manage our inventory of about 1400 SKU's. It nicely handles:

- printing barcoded price tags / product ID stickers,
- helping manage physical inventories,
- breaking down master-pack quantities into sellable units,
- creating PO's based on reorder points and restocking levels,
- creating sales and inventory reports,
- interfacing with bar-code readers,
- printing sales receipts and packing slips.

We are on v1.3, which is a few years old, but it has really worked well for us.

[shillub]

Small business inventory software is so important, but yet it feels that there are very few good solutions that won't break the bank but are still very useful.

[jecasc]

If you can't find anything reasonable priced that suits your neads, the next best thing you can do in my opinion is to find a system that does most of what you need AND uses a database system you are familar with. I use a system that is running on a MYSQL database. The basics are covered by the inventory system, for everything else I have written PHP scripts that dig into the database and extract and process the information for my needs. That's perfect since I can access the scripts simply through the webbrowser on any computer in the network or on portable devices.

For example I have written scripts that extract product information for portable computers. We use Motorola MC 55 devices with built in barcode readers that connect to the network by WLAN so I can simply scan any product and get information like storage location, number of items in stock and so on. Or I can scan a number of packing slips and my PHP script returns a picking list and things like that.

Unfortunatly the particular inventory system I use is only available in german language, so probably of no use to you. But I have found it extremly valuable being able to extend the system for my personal needs since I am familiar with MYSQL.