The process of inventory management involves striking a perfect balance between the demand for products and the supply of products. This is vital to keep your business afloat.

Ensuring a streamlined process to take care of your inventory implies using sound systems for controlling, storing, managing and overseeing timely delivery of goods to customers. Many small businesses think that such tasks can be accomplished by pen and paper.

This doesn’t hold true. Inventory management software is the answer to such issues. It can help in automating important processes and keep inventory within an accessible and organized space.

What is it?

Inventory management software is a software system that helps you track all your products across the business supply chain. Inventory control system helps all processes to run smoothly, starting from a place of order for your products. It is useful to the manufacturing industry, especially for creating work orders, bills of materials and other documents related to production.

The main use of such software is to prevent either overstocking or product outages. It is a tool to organize work data stored in hard copy or spreadsheets. This software helps improve the bottom line of the company by minimizing waste, analysing fresh market trends and making the best investment decisions.

Features of software

You will need to look for the following features while purchasing the best inventory management software:

Barcode scanning

This will identify and track all items. The software integrated with barcode scanners to identify your products and label them.

Stock notifications

You should be able to gain alerts and notifications when there is overstocking or understocking of goods beyond the threshold. This gives you an idea of what products are moving and what is not. Using this information, you can place fresh orders for materials in short supply or run discount campaigns for products in excess.

Inventory optimization

This is ideal for businesses which have seasonal rise or fall in demand. The company can maintain the right amount of stock, without understocking or overstocking.

Stock returns

Gain effective use of stock returns using an automated process and reduce the time taken for manual return.

Multi-location management

This helps you manage multiple points of sale and warehouses.

Purchase order records

Using the software, you can easily identify which products are in demand and helps you prepare to meet orders from customers. It creates a single view of purchase order records.

Report generation 

This feature enables you to view sales history in the form of the most popular products.

Warehouse management

This is a helpful feature if you need to optimize your warehouse stock and have a clear, single view of where all your items are located in the warehouse.

Benefits of software

• The software enables the integration of back-end systems with accounting. It helps with minimum data entry needs, detailed financial reports and impeccable ordering process.
• It enables cloud-based centralized inventory tracking from multiple outlets. A single online dashboard will suffice.
• The software reduces much, the scope of human error at every stage of demand and supply.
• It helps save money by preventing under-stocking and over-stocking.

In sum, ensure you buy inventory management software that grows with your business. The best software is one that works well while you start the business and continues to do so, while the business expands.