Tracking Inventory

[jrockfl]

What applications do you use for managing inventory?
Right now, I just use Peachtree.

Do you count every product that you receive in?
So if you order 500 pieces of product, do you have an employee count it all?

How do you inventory counts with orders that are processing and not have been shipped yet?

We could have 50 orders on the printer that have not been picked yet. So if were to count inventory, it would not be accurate because of the orders that were be processed.

Are all your orders printed out and then picked?
What happens if you pull and order and all of the items are not in stock? What would you do to handle this?

[JackieBlue]

@jrockfl - we use a couple of different applications. For accounting, we use Quickbooks. This is the system of record for financial and reporting but is not used for day to day management.

For day to day, we use two systems - iMagic Inventory and our homegrown system for shipping and management. Our orders are downloaded twice daily from our website and various marketplaces. These are downloaded into iMagic, inventory adjusted, etc. We print and ship the items from our own system. iMagic has invoiving but we do not use it for that.

Receiving is all done in iMagic. Inventory comes in and is checked in and quanties adjusted (or new items added) in iMagic.

Currently, mistakes can still happen. Q1 we are adding UPC scanning on shipment as well as check in to hopefully eliminate inventory errors.

We can print the orders and then pick but we often run our own picklist report to pull items for the orders.

If we are out of stock and it is the only item, we contact the customer and offer to send when we have inventory (if it is soon) or just cancel if it is not available and refund the order. We do partial refunds on multi-item orders that are missing some items.

[jrockfl]

What about when you create a PO for new inventory, do you create that in Quickbooks? I create the PO in Peachtree and use it to handle the inventory.

What does iMagic provide you that is better?
Thank you for the info!

[JackieBlue]

We do not create POs for new inventory. The reason being is that often our suppliers may be short on what we ordered. Inventory is entered or adjusted into iMagic and on receipt. We only enter final invoices in Quickbooks.

iMagic adds value for us in several ways. First, we use it on a SQL server platform, which is scalable and OPEN. I can write reports against it as well as modify the data externally - such as auto loading orders downloaded from various marketplaces. Second, we store individual customer information there. Quickbooks has limitations on the number of customers you can have - we would easily reach it. Instead, we use stuff like -Ebay-TN to denote an eBay customer in TN.

[votrechien]

We use Linnworks...it's been a godsend in a lot of ways (they really should pay me for all the promoting I do of their product!). If you're selling across multiple channels, such as eBay and Amazon, it's by far the best solution I've found (stone edge and mail order manager do not have cloud based solutions which is important for us).

[JackieBlue]

We tried Linnworks and found it wanting. Channel Advisor sucks too. We wrote our own system. BUT...this is within our skill set to manage (we hire consultants and do some of our own coding). If you are not comfortable with this approach, then something like LInnworks is really the only choice.

[jwurunner]

Programs such as MOM by Dydacomp, Stone Edge by Moonson, Order Motion are decent order and inventory management programs. You can also use saas programs such as netsuites.


They track orders, inventory, customer and more.

[jrockfl]

Thank you for the replies. I will look into some of those applications and see if it can improve our business.

[jrockfl]

If you are selling on different channels, Amazon, Ebay etc.
Does iMagic and Linnworks maintain a relationship with different order numbers?

I would think the order numbers, from each channel could possibly be different.

How do you do handle this?

[JackieBlue]

We wrote our own interfaces to the marketplaces. We have created a table that has the marketplace orderid but use our internal order id for most things.

[ssgumby]

We've done the same thing as JackieBlue.

[jrockfl]

Ok, that is what I was thinking. A cross reference table.
For those using Quickbooks, what version do you use?
I'm using Peachtree, I like it but it seems like I'm the only one who uses it lol.