15 Feb
Inventory management is a critical part of running a successful ecommerce store. Your inventory management system does more than just provide an insight into what you’re selling.
Keeping track of all orders and stock levels across sales channels becomes more difficult as demand increases. If you’re at this stage this means you need a Shopify inventory management app for your store.
Your inventory management app for Shopify needs to be user-friendly, capable of showing you when you should restock products in advance. Plenty of advanced tools in your inventory management tool will help you to scale your business and order fulfillment practices effectively.
Let’s look at top Shopify inventory management apps.
The Importance of Inventory Management
Inventory management is the most important and effective part of an ecommerce store. It helps you keep an eye on your inventory turnover and figure out the right amount of stock you should be keeping in your warehouse.
Moreover, a good system will provide you with insight into your inventory and allow you to understand how often you should restock each of your products.
You should have a system in place to assist with the following:
1. Prevent running out of stock, overselling and overstocking
Running out of stock means that you miss out on sales opportunities. Many online shoppers will go to a competitor if the product they want to purchase on your website is out of stock. Overselling is another major issue, selling a product you no longer hold in stock can cause angry customers and result in a tarnished business reputation.
An inventory management system helps you provide a better customer experience. You’ll be able to inform shoppers of how many products you have in stock (if you choose to list the number with the product), and save your customer support team from constant back and forth communications with consumers.
2. Manage cash flow
Inventory management apps can give you a more accurate view of your cash flow and assets. This makes it easier to determine how much you should budget towards buying new stock for your business. You can also make informed decisions about how to price products and how to use warehouse space. Some inventory management software even integrates with accounting tools, like those from QuickBooks.
3. Improve multi-channel selling and demand forecasting
An inventory management system will allow you to manage all your sales channels with ease and ensure that each channel has sufficient stock levels. A system will also help you track and forecast sales, which will help you predict how much inventory you’ll need during different parts of the year. From there, it becomes a lot easier to understand how your inventory fluctuates over time, as well as how product demand changes from season to season.
Why do you need a Shopify inventory management app?
An inventory management software can accurately track your inventory stock in real time, from the moment you place the order with your supplier to when it lands in the hands of the customer. This reduces the need to repeatedly check on your stock levels as you can be sure they will be accurate.
Moreover, You’ll also increase team productivity and accuracy because employees won’t spend large sums of time manually tracking inventory.
Basically, you should look into an inventory management app if you:
- Spend a lot of your time managing inventory
- Regularly run out of stock or have products oversell
- Find it difficult to track and update stock levels across all your sales channels
What to look for in a Shopify inventory management app
There are many inventory management apps out there, each with their own distinct features, advantages and disadvantages. However, at a minimum, the app you choose to manage your inventory with should:
- Offer extensive and detailed inventory tracking: You should be able to track all orders and order fulfillment information, as well as receive notifications on when to purchase additional stock.
- Integrate with other apps you use: The inventory app you choose should play nicely with the other apps you use.
- Have sales forecasting capabilities: While there are a number of variables involved with forecasting sales, your inventory management app should offer a ballpark projection of market trends and growth rate.
- Include a POS integration: A POS integration is crucial if you also sell from a physical store. This will allow you to automatically sync online and in-store orders and stock levels, and make sure there are no discrepancies between stock levels in your online and offline sales channels.
- Offer actionable reports and inventory analysis: Your app should offer reports and inventory analysis that fit your inventory management methods. The app should generate a variety of real-time reports and allow you to customize them as you see fit.
Top Shopify inventory management apps
Let’s look at some of the top amazing apps for Shopify inventory management.
1. Stock Sync
This is one of the amazing Shopify inventory management apps. Stock Sync helps you save time dealing with tedious inventory management. Also, it removes any unwanted or discontinued products from the store.
Inventory update works even without adding the products using Stock Sync. And you can Sync to multiple vendor’s websites to track their inventory automatically. This app exports inventory to supplier or vendor to track stock held in store. You can choose to update 20+ different product fields such as description, title, images, cost, tags, meta fields and many more matched by SKU/barcode.
Price: It comes with 14days free trial
- Free
- Basic – $5/month
- Pro – ProXL – $10/month
- Enterprise & More- $49/month
2. TradeGecko
With TradeGecko inventory management app you can grow your business and sell across multiple channels. The multi-channel inventory management app helps Shopify businesses keep accurate track of their inventory and manage sales that come through multiple sales channels. The app can be set to generate purchase orders automatically, saving you from running out of stock. Its automated workflows can help you simplify order routing.
TradeGecko integrates with all the major 3PL companies and Fulfillment By Amazon. It can also be integrated with accounting apps, such as Xero and Quickbooks, which enables you to sync revenue and costs with ease. The app provides detailed sales reporting and demand forecasting, and allows you to analyze your sales channels’ performance.
Price: It comes with 14days free trial
- Founder – $39/month
- Lite – $99/month
- Small business – $249/month
- Business – $699/month
3. Skubana
Skubana acts as the central nervous system of your operations. It unifies all the tools you need to run your business, automates repetitive tasks, and even thinks for you on profitability, forecasting, and demand planning. Also, it offers multi-channel inventory management, advanced multi-warehouse demand forecasting and automated purchase orders.
Moreover, Skubana’s powerful automation proactively generates POs, identifies the best shipping and finds new opportunities for cost cutting and profitability. It boosts your margins, bottom line, and organizational efficiency with obsessively detailed data on every individual SKU and operation.
Price: $1,000/month
4. Sellbrite
Sellbrite inventory management app enables brands & retailers to list and sell products effortlessly on the world’s largest online marketplaces and gain centralized control over inventory and orders. Moreover, Sellbrite’s simple, intuitive interface provides powerful tools and automation to simplify listing your products, and integrates with many popular US marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Google, and Etsy.
It’s quick to set up and easy to use, once you install the Sellbrite app and your Shopify products are automatically imported into Sellbrite. Businesses that use Sellbrite get access to a centralized fulfillment interface through which they manage and fulfill all orders. Also, it has custom templates and you can create unlimited pre-saved listing templates in advance.
Price: It comes with 30days free trial
- Free
- Pro 100 – $19/month
- Pro 500 – $59/month
- Pro 2K – $99/month
5. Stocky
Stocky is a highly-rated Shopify inventory management app. It offers a range of advanced features. The app can help you forecast demand based on seasonal trends and give you specific purchase order suggestions. Moreover, Stocky can also provide forecasts based on recent performance by looking at your latest orders and sales performance. This type of forecast is especially useful for new and non-seasonal products.
Additionally, it saves time and reduces errors by eliminating the need to manage spreadsheets or multiple systems. Also, you can use one tool to track your products across all your locations.
Price: It’s FREE to install
6. ShipHero
ShipHero is a complete WMS/OMS solution for ecommerce businesses that run their own warehouse. It is a complete cloud-based solution that works in your web browser, with the best mobile app for ios devices that allow your team to work in the warehouse. ShipHero’s mobile app puts operations in your hands, every movement of inventory is tracked in real-time.
Furthermore, ShipHero figures out the most efficient picking routes so you can save the footsteps. It allows you to sync your inventory across all your sales channels and implement automated rules to reduce manual tasks.
Price: It have 2 plans
- For brands – $1,850/month
- For 3PLs – $1,995/month
7. Katana
Katana is a modern manufacturing & inventory management software for small and scaling businesses. Its visual interface and smart real-time master planning allow manufacturers to get an overview of the entire business from one centralized point of truth.
This inventory management app is an excellent option for stores that produce their own products rather than resell items made by others. Katana allows you to manage your raw materials, finished products and sales orders all from the same place. Its visual dashboards make it much easier to keep track of your production process and maintain optimal inventory levels.
Price: it comes with 14days free trial and the plan starts with $99/month
8. Peoplevox
Peoplevox inventory management app is a Shopify Plus exclusive. If your store is on standard Shopify, you’ll need to use one of the other inventory management solutions covered in this guide.
This inventory app is an excellent fit for particularly large online stores. It automatically scales to your order volume, so you never need to worry about a spike in sales affecting the performance of the app. It also has an offline mode that will help you avoid interruptions as well.
Price: To find out how much Peoplevox will cost for your business, you’ll need to contact Descartes for a quote.
9. SKULabs
SKULab is a multichannel inventory management and shipping solution. It keeps warehouse inventory accurate and syncs to all of your channels. Also, it reduces shipping costs by comparing rates between multiple carriers.
SKULabs team will qualify your operations prior to signing up in order to make sure SKULabs meets your needs. From 0 orders to 50,000 order plans, we can build custom quotes for your needs. SKULabs works well as a pure warehouse and inventory management solution without emphasis on fulfillment.
Price: It have 3 plans
- Basic plan – $499/month
- Pro plan – $799/month
- Enterprise – $1,199/month
10. Trunk
With Trunk inventory management app, you can manage your storefronts on Amazon, eBay, Etsy and many other platforms from the same dashboard. The inventory across all of your stores will be synced in real-time.
Furthermore, Trunk centralize your inventory and keep stock levels synced by SKU within the same and/or across different sales channels. It can also build bundles & kits that adjust in real-time, keeping quantities in sync across packs and components. Duplicate SKU syncing is also supported.
Price: It comes with 14days free trial
- Essential – $35/month
- Pro – $39/month
Conclusion
If you have an inventory management tool for Shopify, you can avoid issues with cash flow, and make your small business look as trustworthy as possible. The key to success is finding the right inventory management app. You need something that helps you to make informed decisions regarding things like inventory management and purchasing more stock.
With the above knowledge, figure out the right app for your store so you can keep inventory under control and sales filing in.