2017 Review of Zoho Inventory Management

From the 2017 review of Inventory Management systems.

Zoho inventory is equipped with host of features that are necessary for managing day to day business. Users can create a database for all of their contacts and items that they deal with, record purchase and sale orders, send invoices to customers, generate bill,and ship goods with integrated shipping options. To make things simpler, Zoho Inventory also gives the user an option to import customer, item and item groups detail with the help of an CSV file.

In order to meet the need of growing business, Zoho Inventory also supports features like; Warehouse Management, Bar Coding, Serial Number Tracking, Drop-shipment, and Backordering. Users can maintain inventory in multiple locations and by enabling the single tracking feature, they can identify and keep track of each item in their inventory. Users may even choose to record items by scanning the bar codes however, the application does not support generating a bar code at present.

Zoho Inventory includes kitting/bundling capability using which the users can build simple kits and sell the resultant items as a bundle, purchase kits and sell items individually, or create simple assemblies, which would be tracked as a composite item. Zoho Inventory uses price lists that enable users to create specific pricing lists for certain customers, offer an across the board price reduction, or offer special pricing levels as desired. Price lists can be attached directly to a specific customer or vendor, or used with a sales transaction. Only one selling price can be permanently attached to each item or item group created. Though there is no direct option for volume pricing, product users can assign special discounts or reduced pricing using the price lists that were mentioned earlier.

Zoho uses FIFO as their default inventory valuation method.Zoho Inventory offers a decent amount or reporting options, including an excellent dashboard overview that displays sales activity, low stock items, top selling items, and number of active sales orders. A good selection of inventory reports are also available, including Product Sales Report, Inventory Details, Product Purchase Report, Sales Order History, and an Inventory Valuation Summary. All reports can be viewed on screen, printed, or exported as an XLS file, a CSV file, or saved as a PDF.

Zoho Inventory seamlessly integrates with Zoho Books and Zoho CRM, which offers complete financial and CRM capability respectively. Integration with third party shipping, e-commerce and shopping cart apps such as FedEx, DHL, UPS, Amazon.com, eBay, Etsy, Big Commerce, Magento, Shopify, PayPal, Stripe, and wepay, ensuring complete brick and mortar and e-commerce integration, as well as accurate inventory levels at all times.

Zoho Inventory offers excellent support options from the Zoho website, as well as easy access to help functionality from the product itself. A comprehensive User Guide is available that provides details on all inventory and related features. An FAQ section helps to address common concerns, and both blogs and forums are available for users to access and participate in. Zoho also offers weekly webinars, with users able to register directly from the website. A series of Essential Business Guides are also available from the Zoho website.

Although best suited for growing businesses and retailers with a robust online e-commerce presence, Zoho Inventory helps the small startups by providing a freeminumplan. Paid version is available in three editions; Basic, which supports 100 online orders, up to two warehouses, and 10 users, and is available for $29.00 per month. The Standard edition is $79.00 per month and supports up to 10,000 online orders, 5 warehouses and up to 15 users.

 

2017 Rating – 4.5 Stars