Warehouse Inventory Software Solutions

In common with many other software packages, warehouse inventory software was initially developed to control the storing and the movement of material inside the warehouse. Subsequently, warehouse management has developed into sophisticated ERP packages that integrate a number of other functions for manufacturing, logistics and order management and complete accounting. At heart the basic purpose of warehouse inventory software remains the control and management of material inside the warehouse and the associated tasks such as inventory levels and purchasing and procurement.

Information technology has now progressed to the age where warehouse inventory software with highly sophisticated capabilities comes at a modest investment. Here are some factors that you should be looking for when shopping for new software:

1) The warehouse inventory software must be user friendly and accompanied by adequate training material so that even not very computer experienced staff can learn to handle it with a minimum of time and cost. Your employees should be able to locate "bins" almost instantaneously both for removing material that needs to be taken out. For storing in coming material that needs to be put away, the system should provide both a process and a guide to ensure that they are stacked in the right places.

2) With the best warehouse inventory software, you should start to see returns on your investment virtually overnight. The software should, with proper use:

Reduce inventory with a "just in time" approach and reduce overstocking and dead items.
Reduce the cost of labor. In fact you should be able to employ not very skilled people and train them at little expense to be efficient.
Drastically improve process efficiency thus improving response times to material requests and raising the overall level of service, whether internal or to the customer.
Greatly improve the utilization and availability of warehouse space. This is true particularly for businesses with multiple warehouses and integrated warehouse inventory software.

3) The software must be flexible and scalable to accommodate changes in business volumes as well as changed product lines with ease. This should normally be achievable with a few minor modifications to the master database without the necessity of expensive software modifications or upgrades

4) The software must preferably be modular so that additional modules can be added as and when required. His system should have the capability of becoming a large-scale warehouse management system should the size of the business so warrant.

5) The software should be able to provide customized online real-time information and reports so that key trends are highlighted and remedial action can be swiftly initiated.

Before selecting final warehouse inventory software, put time and effort into doing your homework. Draw up a competitive evaluation of different vendors highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each as well as a cost benefit analysis. In particular, familiarize yourself with the support and maintenance that each one offers as this would be critical to the ongoing performance of your warehouse inventory software. The advantage of picking modular or flexible software is that you can start with a modest investment and scale up once you begin to see the results come in.

Intuit Warehouse Inventory System

Learn how to manage inventory using the web-based Intuit Warehouse Management ES (WMES) and a mobile barcode scanner, which connects seamlessly with Intuit QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions.