#1 most frequent
India
43.2%160 installations of 370
What is Zoho Inventory?
Zoho Inventory is a cloud-based inventory management solution designed for small to midsize businesses. It features inventory management modules including reporting and analysis, and lot traceability. It features mobile compatible apps for Android and iOS devices.
Categories & Use Cases
Media
1 / 7
Who Buys & Uses Zoho Inventory
#2 most frequent
United States of America
29.2%108 installations of 370
#3 most frequent
Canada
8.1%30 installations of 370
Simple to get started, does the basics well at a relatively cheap price
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Zoho Inventory for our eCommerce offshoot and it feeds our retail website and also our eBay Store. There have been plans to also include Amazon as an offering but, to date, this has not been implemented. We initially needed a simple and cheap inventory management program to enable us to maintain good audit trails within the business and to provide a simple method of tracking and retaining customers.
Pros
- It is simple to use.
- Does all the basics well.
- Is able to integrate with our CRM.
Cons
- A little too linear, there could be more room for changing processes to fit business needs.
- Inventory assumes everybody works the same way and needs to be more customizable.
- Integrations with Shopify could be better.
Most Important Features
- Multi Warehousing.
- Good basic user package.
- Reordering
Return on Investment
- It has allowed us to track the small inventory we have for online sales.
- We have been able to raise orders more efficiently.
- Allowed eComm department to become self sufficient.
Alternatives Considered
Shopify Plus
Other Software Used
Shopify Plus, Zoho Projects, Zoho Forms, Zoho Books
All fluff and no substance
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use it to manage and track our inventory along with serialized stock. It works in tandem with Zoho CRM and Zoho Books. Quotes are converted and the sales orders appear in Zoho Inventory where the warehouse processes the order and ships.
It's possible to pull pick slips but because the system does not have bin locations you don't know where the items are located. If you have a large warehouse this makes it very difficult. Customizing sales order templates, packing slips is difficult. For example if you want to add pick notes to line items you need to be an expert in HTML to design your your template because the pick note will show on invoices also!
Pros
- Tracks which orders have been shipped
- Tracks which orders have been packed
- Tracks with orders have been invoiced
- Works well with Zoho Books
Cons
- Templates within Zoho Inventory are very weak. You can't customize many including package slips, shipment docs, etc...
- When an order has multiple packages, it's next to impossible to find the item you are looking for. Scenario, a large order has many packages and a customer has cancelled one of the items. You must click through every package to find the item, edit the package and remove it before you can cancel the item.
- The reports within Inventory are extremely basic and many of them are useless
- The packing slip module is useless as it does not print out bin locations
- It's an inventory management system but it does not have bin locations
- The backorder system is useless. If you "backorder" something then the whole order is locked until the backorder arrives in. Scenario.... a client orders 20 items, 1 is on backorder. You "backorder" that one item but want to ship the other 19... not possible. The order gets completely locked.
- You can't print out RMA requests. There is just no option to do it, you have to do a screen shot
- Integration with Amazon or other 3rd party e-commerce providers is troublesome.
Most Important Features
- Tracking inventory
- Tracking inventory serials
- Being able to easily pick orders and manage which needs picked and shipped
Return on Investment
- Coming from QuickBooks enterprise with inventory add-on it's an improvement in tracking stock because it restricts so much of what you do.
- Migrating to Inventory was a bit of a nightmare. I'd recommend starting clean or bring as little data as possible.
Alternatives Considered
QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise
Lot of features but the depth of their functionality proves limited
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We had various warehouses all holding different types of stock, certain items could only be held at certain locations, and keeping a track of the whereabouts of the entire inventory was almost impossible. Lots of items were either lost or misplaced for sometimes weeks at a time, Zoho we hoped would fix the problem and help speed up our order processing
Pros
- Manage multiple sites
- Stock transfer
- Integration
Cons
- Reporting
- Customer support
- Pointless features
Most Important Features
- Manage multiple warehouses
- Better insights into warehouse management
- Manage sales and purchase orders
Return on Investment
- We stopped using it as it was difficult to set up.
- Zoho offers a lot of features but the depth of its functionality proves limited as your demands increase.
