Looking for better insights into your sell-through rate, automatic stock level updates across sales channels, and to carry out fewer stock takes?
Enter, inventory management software.
When you first start your retail business, you might not feel like you need a software for inventory management. But get it anyway, as a gift to your future scaled-up business. Getting in at the start is a lot easier than adding it later on, and you’ll be saving yourself both time and money down the line.
Here are five of the best software for retail inventory management to consider. They’re in no particular order — retail is a broad sector, and each of these platforms has its own USP, and target audience.
Best 5 Retail Inventory Management Software
1. Inventora
💡 Best for: Retailers and brands working directly with manufacturers, or making their own products
💸 Starts from: Free plan, then $19/month
There are plenty of inventory management software options available when it comes to purely managing the stock that you sell across different platforms.
But the founders of Inventora realised that, when it comes to making and selling your own products, there wasn’t really a solution out there that could keep track of your raw materials as well as what you’re selling, and analyse the relationship between the two. And this is what Inventora is designed to be great at, and it’s affordable, too.
Inventora is a relatively new solution but is committed to taking on board customer feedback, and acting on it. Customers also praise the ability to easily distinguish between wholesale and retail orders, something we know will be music to the ears of the CREOATE community.
If you’re pre-revenue, you can use Inventora for free on the ‘Hobby’ plan, and thereafter the Business plan costs just $19/month.
2. Sortly
💡 Best for: Very small or new retailers
💸 Starts from: Free plan, then $29/month
Sortly bills itself as ‘The Simplest Inventory System, Ever’, and — aside from a few bugs here and there — this goal seems to be reflected in their customers’ experiences.
Sortly was specifically designed to be a much more visual way to track the price, location, condition etc of each product in your inventory. The app is accessible via smartphones, tablets and laptops for added ease, and the platform is very well-reviewed on the whole.
Really small businesses can even use Sortly for free for up to 100 entries. After that plans start at $29/month (billed annually) or $49/month (billed monthly).
3. Lightspeed
💡 Best for: Established retail stores (or chains)
💸 Starts from: $69/month (billed annually) or $79/month (billed monthly)
Lightspeed is a powerful and popular inventory management system, and one you’re likely to already have heard of if you’ve done a little research.
Lightspeed may be a little pricier than many of the other platforms on this list (and keep in mind every transaction will incur a fee of 2.6% + $0.10), but each account also gets a dedicated account manager, and one-to-one setup. You can also lower the price by agreeing to a longer contract, but many people report this is difficult to then cancel.
4. SellerChamp
💡 Best for: Ecommerce businesses with a large number of SKUs
💸 Starts from: $39/month (billed annually)
SellerChamp scores over 4 stars on every review site we checked, including those based on customer reviews alone, which is a pretty rare achievement for a software.
But what makes SellerChamp so great? One thing that stood out to us was the number of people who mention how fast SellerChamp makes listing products across platforms like eBay. ‘
SellerChamp = speedy listings’, wrote one customer. ‘I own over 50,000 collectible vintage books, and work alone, so having a way to list 100-125 books in a day with SellerChamp as opposed to listing only 20 a day previously will make a huge difference in my future sales.’
SellerChamp has one-click integrations with all the major B2C marketplaces, including eBay, Etsy and Amazon, as well as major ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce.
For online retailer businesses with a high number of SKUs — for example, those selling vintage items — SellerChamp is worth considering as a way to really speed up the time-consuming listing process.
5. Rain
💡 Best for: Multichannel or multi location retailers
💸 Starts from: Unclear
Last but not least is Rain, a software which also scores 4 stars or more across every review site we’ve come across (again, including those that are based purely on customer reviews). Nice work, Rain!
We know from speaking with many independent retailers that getting your inventory management system to work across all your channels can be a real pain. Rain, it seems, makes this relatively painless, automating processes which may not be automatic for you right now. It’s ideal for multichannel or multi location retailers.
It also works well for managing the sale of experiences or services, too, something several customers mention in their reviews. All in all, one worth considering for your brick and mortar retail store(s).
But, there are a couple of downsides to Rain — the first being that it’s only available in the US and Canada, the second being they’re reluctant to show pricing on their website (which in our experience is rarely a good sign when it comes to price point!).
👋 Looking to fill your retail store with independent brands, or start selling wholesale to independent retail stores? Take a look at CREOATE
Browse Popular Categories at CREOATE: Wholesale Jewelry | Wholesale Gifts | Wholesale Stationery | Wholesale Beauty Products | Wholesale Mugs | Wholesale Homeware
