Inventory management software is used to track inventory levels, sales processes, orders, and deliveries. It can also be utilized to generate production-related documentation such as work orders and bill of materials. Companies make use of this system to avoid overstocking of products and outages. Inventory management software offers an improved way to organize inventory information compared to spreadsheets or paper. This solution resembles distribution software because it helps distributors spend less money on inventories, thus giving them an edge over competitors. Main features of this software include order management, asset tracking, service management, accounting management, invoicing management and product identification.
How To Choose The Best Inventory Management Software
Companies that deal with large amounts of physical products need a reliable and efficient accounting inventory management software. But since there are hundreds of tools in the market, it can be a hard task to select the right one for your needs.
A good course of action is to sign up for at least a few free trial plans or demo from popular inventory management software providers. With that method you will have the opportunity to test the important elements and you will get a good comparison of the capabilities of the chosen programs. You will also understand what is inventory management software better.
Key Features of Inventory Management Software
These are the main features to expect from your next inventory management system:
- Product categorization.This feature enables you to migrate products from one group/channel to another, and to categorize them by name, type, price, supplier, supply channel, and so on. On top of it, you get to exercise full inventory control, since you can track every product, and forecast and support demand.
- Sales/purchase orders. Inventory management software makes it possible to manage purchase and sales from a single system, ideally such that is packed with order tracking tools, inventory controls tools, invoice management tools, and so on.
- Electronic scanning.This feature is more than helpful, as it enables electronic data interchange, and caters for global selling trends. Scanning and tracking assets electronically is a whole new level of inventory control, allowing also electronic shipment and complete warehouse tracking.
- Automatic ordering.Automated ordering saves companies both their time and their manual efforts for managing billing and tracking their projected sales in an optimized way. This type of multichannel inventory management is welcomed for every retailer, regardless of whether he is selling only one product or many of them.
- Dynamic product information.By dynamic product information, we actually mean access and full inventory control of your stock, and a close eye on every product available. In such way, products can be managed easily, and the sales information about them can be easily integrated with the rest of the company’s software architecture.
Benefits of Inventory Management Software
Our detailed comparisons show that these are the three main benefits companies experience when using a solid accounting inventory management system:
- Efficiency and Speed. An inventory management system makes it easy to do a range of tasks from inputting data to taking inventory. It can take days to perform a manual count of inventory, but an inventory management solution can help you accomplish the task in a few hours.
- Document Generation. Managers can use the system to automatically generate a range of documents such as account statements, invoices, checks, and purchase orders. They can automatically order a fresh batch of products if they run low on stock.
- Insightful Data. An inventory management system offers insightful reports on data such as how many units are in stock, how many have been sold, and which are the fastest-selling products.
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