Inventory Stock Management Software Overview


inventory stock management software system

Stock management is a specific process that includes overseeing and controlling the flow of items (materials, goods, and parts) into and out of the company's inventory. Constructive stock control and management software system keeps inventory levels and stock costs under strict control and helps companies to reach positive cash flow. Especially ensuring the right inventory quantity at the right place and at the right time is decisive for companies performing sales (including route sales) and equipment service. Stock management software helps companies to streamline their business operations by combining sales information and access to the right amount of the current inventory available in the stock. Effective stock management software system gives full up-to-date inventory presentation, enables comprehensive financial management, and provides capabilities that enable simply reporting. Businesses are different, therefore can have some specific peculiarities in inventory management. However, there are a few key features that every inventory management system should provide.

Stock management software benefits:

  • Sales managers – helps to turn the leads into orders, orders into shipments, and shipments into revenue in the shortest time. 
  • Sales representatives – gives real-time information about available inventory that makes selling processes across multiple channels much easier.
  • Warehouse employees – enables managing multiple warehouses in a single system, and provides information about items' location and quantity.
  • Accountants and bookkeepers – enables monitoring of purchasing and selling financial transactions and quick access to the latest financial reports.

Should-have features of the stock management software

  • Tracking inventory levels

The key responsibility of any stock management software system is the ability to track inventory levels. In other words, stock software should give users full real-time information about how many items are received and are available in the warehouses, how many customer orders are filled and how many need to be fulfilled, when it is necessary to purchase missing items, and other helpful information. There are different ways of inventory tracking, including lot control, barcodes, kitting, batch control, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, serialization, and others. Therefore, it is very significant to ensure that the stock software system you are going to use provides the tracking capabilities you need.

  • Security

A stock management software system must be secure. Regardless you use the cloud-based stock management software or your inventory management software system is installed on the internal servers, security measures should be put in place to protect the important business data from damage, theft, and hacking. Losing the data can be detrimental and extremely expensive as it creates for the company many difficulties such as lost time, money, business secrets, and, even, worst. Therefore, the stock management system should be secured. Regarding its physical security, you should take care and place your hardware in a safe location protected from different kinds of physical impact. As to software security, a provider offering a solution for inventory management should supply its system with an advanced security setup that includes various components such as authentication, virus protection, and backups.

Stock Management Software Features

  • Reporting

Reports enable the analysis of the current business activity and forecasting of future operations, and, as a result, help companies to create a seamless workflow and increase their efficiency. Therefore, reporting is a critical feature that should be provided by any stock software system. Stock management software systems can provide different types of reports, some of them can be more beneficial than others. For example, reports can show the product demand and supply. Such information is helpful as it allows the company to determine how much inventory is needed for the fulfillment of customer orders. Another example, reports can help to determine which products are the most profitable and which ones enable discovering the sales trends. Inventory summary, order history, transaction reports, inventory totals, and many other reports can provide an inventory management software system. Which reports your company needs to make an effective analysis of its inventory processes should be identified by you and your professionals. Your stock software system must create reports your company needs to be competitive.

Inventory stock management software functionality

  • Creating and sending purchase orders. Automated purchasing with lower cost and high control enables moving from paper-based manual purchasing to streamlined purchasing. Combining multiple purchase requisitions in a single purchase order for the same vendor and reusing vendor information and other data while applying contracts and terms saves time that can be used more effectively. 
  • Ordering and receiving purchases. Updating stock quantities of goods and materials when purchased orders are received gives information about item availability and the expiration dates if the shelf life has been defined. 
  • Maintain customers and vendors database. Using database templates specially designed to meet specific needs and requirements allows companies to organize and manage their data without spending time creating a database from scratch.
  • Setting item low-level warnings for reordering prevents companies from “not available” or “out of stock” situations and allows them to perform sales and equipment service in the most effective way in accordance with scheduling or once a customer made an order. 
  • Viewing inventory levels by category and overall. Real-time information about inventory levels in the multiple warehouses allows performing delivery from the warehouse located nearest to the customer. Therefore, the company can increase its profitability and customer sophistication. 
  • Inventory history. The product history gives information about when items were received and sold as well as about the volume of sales. Knowing the sales volume enables forecasting of future sales and, as a result, allows users to predict the needed quantity of goods in the stock.
  • Managing items moving within warehouses. Control of moving items within the company's warehouses enables knowing the level of available goods and maximizing the effective using the warehouse space.
inventory stock management software
  • Grouping items into categories. Having categorized groups of goods helps to organize stock control in an efficient way.
  • Inventory Reporting. A summary of goods provides a comprehensive account of the items in stock. Clear, simple, and exhaustive reports can be used for the analysis of the company's business activity as well as for forecasting future sales.
  • Managing rights for users. Security is a very important aspect of the effective running of any business. If any inventory data is lost, the company will spend time and money to restore the lost information. Thus, providing passwords and login IDs for authenticating users and their rights is necessary for protecting inventory data.
  • Integration with the accounting software system. The ability to use such important software as accounting and inventory systems together allows companies to have all needed information in one place and eliminate unnecessary expenses. Integrating with other software solutions used by the company allows you to eliminate IT costs, including such caring as maintaining and upgrading separate applications.
  • Customization. The ability to customize the inventory stock software with the purpose to meet the specific industry or company needs allows companies to get the most benefits from using the inventory stock software system.

Supply and strong control of the inventory measures enables fulfillment of the customer orders in time. Using the inventory stock management software system saves hours of employees' work concerned with data entry, organizing inventory control, and fulfilling customer orders and gives companies the principal key to business success - the ability to have inventory at the right time in the right place in the right quantity at the right cost.


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