Managing a store with a large catalog of products can be taxing on your time. Inventory, forecasts, orders, bills, taxes — you need to manage all these and more.
But what happens when you have to manage multiple locations? And an eBay store? And a Shopify marketplace? Being a business owner may start to feel like the most overwhelming and stressful job on earth. Not at all like you imagined it to be.
The good news is that an online inventory app comes to your rescue.
When Time Becomes a Problem
Most startups and small businesses can’t afford a management team. They may not even have a warehouse manager or a sales forecasting analyst.
As a small business owner, you’re probably doing most of the work yourself. One moment you’re checking inventory in your warehouse. The next, paying warehouse bills and calculating taxes. And all this time you’re actually thinking about what products to include in your new order.
The problem isn’t one of the data. You probably have plenty of data. You know what sells and what doesn’t. You know everything about vendor shipping fees and taxes.
But you don’t have a way to keep all your sales and inventory data organized in one place. For this reason, you burn a lot of energy checking numbers, making phone calls, and trying to stay in control.
You may even end up doing things you shouldn’t be doing in the first place. Like using spreadsheets to keep track of returns or damaged inventory.
The result? Overwork and needles management effort. And that’s not the worst of it. These can, in turn, inhibit the growth of your business.
When managing inventory takes too much time, you can’t focus on building your business. You won’t have enough time and energy left to plan your marketing campaign. Or to create strategic partnerships. Or to discover new technologies that can streamline your operations.
Here are some of the most time-consuming eCommerce management tasks:
• Checking inventory across warehouses and locations
• Monitoring returns and other lost or damaged items
• Paying storehouse and inventory-related bills
• Adding transactions to your accounting system
• Managing online shops and marketplaces
• Keeping all your inventory data organized
• Using different online tools and platforms to manage purchases and sales
• Manage sales tax and merchant fees
• Integrating new stores and warehouses into your inventory
eCommerce Challenges
All transactions need to be recorded into your accounting system, in real time. One of your greatest challenges is connecting your inventory system with your accounting system. If you don’t, someone will have to move data manually from one to the other. That alone can be a time-consuming process.
Another challenge is making sure warehouse levels are quickly replenished. Online, your shop is open 24/7, and stock levels could dwindle faster.
At the same time, you have to update stock levels in real time. Otherwise, customers may find themselves waiting days, even weeks for their orders.
How Does a Sales and Inventory Software for Small Business Help?
With DataQlick, our inventory management system, all your inventory, and sales data get synced. DataQlick integrates with accounting platforms like Quickbooks, Xero, or Sage. It also works with popular eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, eBay, Amazon FBA, and LightSpeed POS.
As soon as one of your products sells or enters your warehouse, quantities get updated in real time. In this way, you always know how much inventory you have, and get stock alerts before quick-selling items run out.
You also get integrated sales forecasting and order management. Featuring a powerful forecasting tool for small business, DataQlick makes sure you order the right products at the right time. It helps you keep customers satisfied, avoid understock and overstock, and minimize vendor shipping costs.
Because quantities get updated in real time, you have a bird’s eye view over your complete inventory. You can then use your data — including charts and graphs — to zoom in on a location or warehouse.
You may have one online store and one brick-and-mortar store. Or you may have two warehouses and just one online shop. With DataQlick, you can manage any combination of warehouse and store in the cloud. And since DataQlick is a mobile inventory app, you can take it with you anywhere you go.
Here’s how an inventory management software helps you save time:
• Syncs your inventory across locations and warehouses in one centralized database
• Integrates with your accounting system, POS system, and eCommerce platform
• Allows you to do small business vendor management in one place
• Lets you set up automated reorder points
• Brings inventory management to mobile
• Helps you keep track of returns
With an online inventory app you can save hours every week on needless inventory and sales related tasks. You can then invest those hours into building a more efficient business.
Grow your business now. Try DataQlick.
