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Do You Need To Barcode Your Inventory

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How difficult is it to keep track of your inventory, especially when you are selling tons of products? Complex, tiresome and exhausting, isn’t it? One of the ways to simplify this process is through the use of barcoding system. Through an effective barcoding system, you can account for each and every unit of inventory as well as keep track of its movement within the warehouse.

Benefits of Barcode for Your Inventory

The advantages of using a barcode system are many. Some of those include:

  1. You can easily track inventory movement
  2. When the inventory is barcoded, it’s easy to receive and ship out when required
  3. You can keep accurate check on stock levels and usage rate of every type of products
  4. When the inventory is barcoded, it becomes easy to update and maintain detailed data
  5. Makes the process of exporting data for accounting or other backend system easy and simple

There are tons of barcoding solutions available in the market. You need to choose the one that will fit with your overall system while offering flexibility and cost effectiveness.

An ideal barcoding system should:

  • Integrate easily with your existing inventory management system
  • Have the ability to generate unique barcodes for each unit
  • Generate barcodes that are readable by barcode scanners
  • Offer updates automatically about current inventory status
  • Use transactional history to help forecast requirements
  • Offer quick ROI within a year
  • Eliminate data errors that arise due to manual handling
  • Streamline inventory handling process
  • Enhance parts checkout and their timely reordering

Are you looking for a comprehensive barcoding system? The most logical step would be to look at the current options available to you, given the nature of your business and budget. Compare the features that are offered by these solutions with your requirements, and then make an informed decision. If you are getting confused, contact us. We’d be more than happy to help you choose the right barcoding solution.

3 Tips To Reduce eCommerce Inventory Costs

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The largest venue of investment for any eCommerce business is inventory. The companies need to shell out huge chunks of money to order large order of supplies and then spend money to store and maintain them until they are sold. If the inventory costs is not controlled, there are high chances that the company will incur losses even if it manges to achieve soaring sales. Hence, controlling the inventory costs is a must for any business. Following are the three tips that will help you achieve optimum level of inventory at the lowest possible costs.

Categorize inventory
As storing and maintaining physical products costs money, storing high level of stock doesn’t make sense. So divide the inventory into three different categories: products that contribute to the profits, products that allows the company to reach break even point, and products that do not produce profits nor cover costs. To categorize the products, you can check your sales reports to see what sells and what doesn’t.

Plan supplies
If you are a first-time eCommerce merchant, the chances are quite high that you will be excited to order all your supplies as soon as possible without going through adequate planning. Avoid such impulses because you are blocking your capital by ordering unnecessary products, and then you are incurring overheads to maintain those supplies. Before placing any orders with the suppliers, study the demand patter and then estimate how much will you need for the next quarter. If you are into selling seasonal products, consider the peak season as well as slack season of sale of those products. Stocking high level of inventory during slack season doesn’t make any business sense.

Vendor communication
Before you place any order with the vendor, communicating is important to improve the overall efficiency of the process. It’s highly possible that what you see of the product on the website is quite different in the real life. So when the quantity of the order is huge, it’s smarter to first ask for sample and to place order only when the sample’s quality meets your expectations. Apart from the product, you should also inquire about the vendor’s shipping and return policy, specially if you are a dropshipper. It’s very important that your policies and your vendor’s policies go hand in hand for smooth inventory management.

Get Rid of Your Inventory Nightmare

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Do you have to manually manage each and every aspect of your inventory? Do you dread going on vacations just for the fear of increasing the backlog of inventory update process? If so, you are certainly not making the most of the state-of-the-art solutions available in the ecommerce market to make your online business smoother and easier.

When the business is small, it’s very easy to manage suppliers, stock and product flow. However, as the size of business augments, the inventory management process starts getting complex and time-consuming. Manually updating the inventory every time there’s a purchase order or a sales order simply becomes labor intensive and dull. The easiest thing that any fast-growing online business can do is use Enterprise Resource Management (ERP). Once installed, the ERP will take care of each and every aspect of your business, right from manufacturing (if you are into it), to accounting, to customer relationship management.

Apart from saving time and energy, ERP is beneficial in many ways. Some of those benefits are discussed below:

  • Cost Saving: Through ERP, you can implement “Just In Time” model to your business operations and save capital at all stages of the business.
  •  Simplified Process: With the automation of the systems, the flow of the products becomes simple and quick. Generation of POs and bills is simplified, dispatch process is made easy and customer service is streamlined.
  • Better profits: With better processes, you save money in each and every step of your business, leading to lower costs and rising profits.
  • Better Customer Satisfaction: ERP makes sure that each and every order is executed promptly and in an accurate manner, leading to better customer satisfaction. Even when the customer returns the item, the process is quite simple and fast.

If you have fairly straight-forward business operations, you can simply use off-the-shelf solutions. However, if you have a unique business model, it’s better to approach an experienced e-commerce solution provider. They will study your business thoroughly and then offer you a tailor-made solution for your operations.

Essential Features of an Ecommerce Inventory Management Software

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Many developers today offer inventory and order management software for both specific and generic purposes. These software are generally robust applications that can handle any number of products available at a webstore or website. Some even automate complex procedures such as order management and shipping management. An inventory management software comprises several constituents that together build and maintain a product inventory for many online businesses. Some of the essential ones are as follows:Ecommerce Inventory Management Software

  • Asset tracking/shipping management: A stored product can be tracked using its bar code and/or other means of tracking, such as RFID.
  • Order management: When the stock of a product is low, the inventory feature can alert managers regarding the stock that needs to be replenished. This helps the business avoid running out of products or engaging excessive capital in stocked products.
  • Service management: Companies that provide services rather than products can use inventory management features to track the cost of the materials they use to provide services, such as stationery or digital equipment. The companies can thereby arrive at a reasonable price to attach to their services.
  • Barcoding: Barcodes enable input of data on products and orders into the inventory management software. A barcode reader can read barcodes and look up the info on the respective products.

Over and above these essential features, many other features make inventory management systems indispensable to online businesses. For instance, with some software, you can enter different amounts of weight for each product option and still quote accurate shipping rates. Shipping management features intimate the business owner regarding the current status of the shipment.

In addition to such great features, some inventory management software can also be integrated into your accounting system for much higher levels of automation and savings of time and money. It can be a highly effective instrument for controlling multiple online locations, robust inventory and order management, automated shipping management, and so on.

Before you actually invest in some such software, also ask for inventory and order management software that can be custom-built to fulfill your specific business requirements. Get one that best addresses those requirements.

For any further queries on inventory and order management software,  give us a call: +1-888-828-9864 or Contact Us!

Inventory Management for Your Online Store

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Inventory management of products at an online store is as critical to the store’s success as any other business process. But then, it assumes far greater importance in the light of the fact that a well-managed inventory is not merely the store owner’s requirement, it is of great use to the end-user, the all-important customer who visits that store and tries to purchase a product he or she wants to. Thus, the best inventory system would be one that offers highly automated goods management from the store owner’s perspective as well as being thorough, neat, and up to date for the benefit of the store’s customers.Inventory Management for Your Online Store

While many different kinds of inventory software are available in the market, the best instances are often those that are developed by inventory management solution providers with long and proven experience. A great inventory software is one that showcases your products in all the best ways possible and helps you keep track of the goods management necessary. A number of inventory management features and functionalities ensure this by tracking product levels, orders, sales, and deliveries. Online store find it extremely useful in avoiding product overstock and outages.

Some recent versions available provide not only such warehouse management capabilities but also extend to multiple stores, manage shipping processes, and provide single backend for managing all stores. The following are some general benefits of a well developed and designed inventory management system:

  • Excellent Warehouse Management: Helps companies cut expenses by keeping at a minimum the amount of products in storage.
  • Enhanced Shopping Experience: Online customers looking for a given product will also receive suggestions regarding similar other or related products, which means cross- and upselling ops for the seller.
  • Easy Access to Current Data: The store owner or the company executives can access up-to-date data using the inventory software even on a mobile device.
  • Time Savings: Considerable savings of time are possible since more than a single operator can be given appropriate, customizable access to the data.