The Three Most Immediate Ways Inventory Management Software Can Help Your Business


We hear a lot about the long-term effects of a new marketing strategy or the addition of a new inventory software. Multiple claims result in the same basic idea. You have to be in it for the long haul. You have to be patient.

Growth is not immediate. While all of these things are true, it is nice to not have to wait patiently for everything. Inventory management software can benefit you dramatically in the long-term by organizing your product inventory and allowing you to have a better and broader understanding of what is coming and going. In many ways, Inventory management is key for long-term business growth.

But what are some of the more immediate benefits? We look at the three things you can likely feel immediately when growing your business with inventory management software.

1. Hours Saved Daily

You and your team will feel an instant relief of pressure. Any hours spent on manually typing, printing, and applying every shipping label are returned to you.

Some small businesses spend hours doing this every day, and it is an egregious waste of time. Inventory management can instantly print the proper labels right from the platform, avoiding a task you have no business doing in 2019.

2. Monthly Balancing

When the first month rolls around, your balancing will be far sharper and more concise. All orders in the software can be synced to a single account, allowing you to review all your sales and streamline your purchase receipts.

You can save time (and a headache or two) with far snappier account sale management. You will feel this as soon as the first month of use rolls around.

3. A Back-Up Plan for Any Common Problem

Without inventory management, what happens when an item sells out immediately due to an unexpected sale spike increase? It catches managers off-guard, as they wait a few weeks to get the item back in stock.

What happens when you thought you had stock of something but you don’t? You now have to tell the customer you can’t take their money.

These are careless miscalculations, and they happen all the time. If you have a quality inventory management system in place, all of these common concerns can be avoided. The software automatically restocks when an item is low. It accounts for slow moving product so you aren’t wasting space on needless extra inventory, while also taking account of manufacturer discontinues, cash flow shortfall, and more.

When you would have run into a problem in the past, the software picks up the slack. It allows you to navigate the worries of inventory management with greater flexibility. You are not burdened by manual tracking. While you may want to double-check the software and review the numbers often, you can allow the software to do a lot of the heavy lifting. You can program in features and approaches suitable to your needs and interests.

Money spent on inventory is money not spent on growth.

Keep this vital and essential consideration in mind as you navigate your business’ growth.


6 Ways That DEAR Inventory Management Software Streamlines Your Business

Virtually every company with inventory needs a modern sales inventory management system to streamline their operation and stay competitive.
 

However, sometimes it isn’t exactly clear how this type of software can benefit your business.
 

You might be on the fence about upgrading, concerned about compatibility issues, worried about dealing with a new learning curve for the software, or maybe you feel pressed for time.
 

But, implementing inventory management software is much easier than you think; and it can instantly improve your logistics in several ways to get your business moving faster than ever.
Below are 6 clear ways that sales inventory management software can impact your business for the better immediately:
 

#1 – Lower Your Costs

 
Your business might be running, but if you are struggling to keep up with it, unnecessary costs will start to pile up.
 

Products running out of stock will cost you in potential sales; product shipments might arrive at unexpected times when you don’t have the manpower to stock them.

 
Or perhaps you have found that you order too much product way too often due to relying on guesswork instead of analytics and automated ordering.
 

This type of inventory chaos is estimated by The Retail Owners Institute to cost small businesses an estimated extra 30{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3}.

 
When you lack efficient inventory management, you incur several extra expenses such as overtime, insurance costs, product depreciation or expiration, and general stress and fatigue.
 
It’s all unnecessary with modern DEAR sales inventory management software that can help you stay on top of everything with minute-by-minute updates on stock levels, replacement order status updates, and easy reordering of low quantity or backordered products.
 

#2 – Frees Up Worker Time

 
DEAR sales inventory management software offers a range of automation features to free up worker time – such as the automatic generation of SKUs to manage extensive product lines, automated product data generation, streamlined stocktake with fast barcode scanning and more.
 

This will save your staff countless hours if they are currently manually handling any of these tasks. Adding more automation to your inventory management also reduces human errors and helps you avoid those extra costs related to them, with the main benefit of speeding every process up and allowing your workers to focus on other priorities.

#3 – Keeps a Growing Business Organized

 

If your business is growing, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all of the manual inventory management steps that you may be forced to take care of. Perhaps your current manual process has been working up until now, but the workload is just starting to pile up way too much.
 
Now might be the perfect time to test out a robust sales inventory management system like DEAR. As your business grows, things will only get more chaotic and difficult to manage when you can’t rely on automation for as many processes as possible.
 

Rather than dealing with the headaches of trying to track and manage your inventory manually, there are many benefits to upgrading to intuitive inventory management software like DEAR that can be quickly integrated with your existing business as it scales upward.
 

#4 – Improves Your Cash Flow

 
A simple model largely determines the cash flow of your company – cash is used to purchase inventory, and when your inventory is sold it results in cash or receivables.
 

Improving the speed of this cycle ensures that the upfront investment you are spending on inventory is paid back profitably as soon as possible.
 

If you are manually managing your inventory, it’s easy to over-purchase and thus tie up too much of your cash within your inventory. Not to mention, when there’s a demand for out-of-stock products, that also will lower your cash flow due to lost or delayed sales.
 

An unhealthy cash flow often results in suppliers receiving delayed payments and cash reserves dwindling unnecessarily.
 
As a result, you have every incentive to automate several steps of your inventory management so that 1) your product stocks remain at sufficient but not excess levels and 2) in-demand products are always readily available.
 

This lowers your upfront inventory investment and maximizes the efficiency of your sales process, ensuring that you can maintain and grow your cash reserves and establish a healthy, consistent cash flow.
 

#5 – Helps You Avoid Inefficient Strategic Decision Making

The strategic decisions you are making in regard to the type of products you are stocking, upcoming products, and new products to seek out should never be based on guesswork.
 

However, many businesses are operating in this manner, taking shots in the dark when it comes to some of the most impactful product decisions that can affect their bottom line.
With the easily accessible inventory reports that the DEAR sales inventory management system can provide you with, it’s simple to determine where your greatest product demands are in recent months and where you might want to expand.
 

When you are fronting the money to invest in new products, you will always want to carefully analyze your current data to determine which ones are worthwhile and offer the highest possible return, and that’s yet another logistical area where inventory software helps.
 

Likewise, it’s also easy to make inaccurate choices on variety of other strategic decisions related to your inventory management when you aren’t relying on reports and analytics such as deciding on which products to promote and push, choosing pricing and more.
 

#6 – Lets You Focus On Growth

 
Dealing with the minutia of tracking inventory manually and resolving errors that come from delayed orders or overstocking is wasteful in so many ways, but it also diverts you from being able to focus on the growth of your business.
 

By automating several inventory processes with a sales inventory management system, you’ll be able to spend those extra hours on finding new key suppliers, working on marketing campaigns and analytics, developing advertising materials, and anything else that can help your company keep growing.
 

With inventory streamlining software like DEAR, many of the small hiccups that slow your operation down can be avoided altogether. You can even use the software to expand your business across multiple locations while keeping everything nicely organized and fluid.
 

If you have been dealing with some of the inefficiencies and headaches mentioned above, DEAR inventory management software is well worth a try.
 

With a 14-day free trial, there’s no risk to get started today to see how our inventory software can transform your business for the better!

DEAR POS New UI !

DEAR POS cosmetic enhancements

We are pleased to announce the latest round of enhancements to DEAR POS which will be available to you by Sunday 26th of August 2018. Although most of the changes relate to the appearance and performance of the POS there are some important points to note regarding the upcoming release.

What are the changes?

DEAR POS has received a face-lift bringing consistency to all screens and menus. Although there will be no disruption to your work during the release on 26th of August, upon restarting the POS or logging out the new interface will be applied.

Login screen

Outlet selection

 

Register selection

Register – Sale Screen has undergone the most significant functionality enhancements. Line items can now be easily edited in quantity and discount fields. Customer, Sale Rep, Quick Sale and Sale note have been moved to the Add button in bottom right corner of screen.

Reports – Reports have also been updated with a consistent theme improving general performance and readability of data.


 

New Release 29-Jul-2018, New Order Routing Feature, Updates to DEAR POS, DEAR B2B, Quickbooks & More!

New Improvements to DEAR

 

  • POS: If Loyalty is disabled within DEAR POS setup page, no information regarding loyalty will be visible within DEAR POS application.

 

  • POS: You can now issue Refunds for sales made outside of DEAR POS. No Receipt Refund button has been introduced in the sales history screen for this purpose.

 

  • POS: Now when an Exchange is processed in DEAR POS a new fulfillment will be created in the Advanced Sale Module for the newly exchanged product. Pick/Pack/Ship for the new item will be completed automatically by DEAR.

 

  • POS: If a Deal created in DEAR is not applied to a specific item (e.g. a product or some other product attribute like tag/brand/category), this Deal will now apply to all products listed in POS.

 

  • POS: Optimization for customer lookup/selection introduced in DEAR POS which has improved the speed of customer search function.

 

 

  • Shopify: New special Tax-Free rule added to tax mapping in Shopify. If a DEAR tax rule is mapped to this Shopify rule, it will override any other taxes in cases where tax amounts are zero on the line.

 

  • Order Routing: Optimize DEAR warehouse locations and ship from closest warehouse based on sale order shipping address. To learn how you can set up order routing for your organization refer to our knowledge base article here.

 

  • Quickbooks: Optional Auto-sync has been introduced for Quickbooks.

 

 

  • DEAR B2B Portal: Customers who place orders through the B2B portal will now be able to see estimated delivery date inside their order information. Required by date within DEAR sale order will be used as the estimated delivery date on the portal.

New Release 20-Jun-2018, DEAR POS, DEAR WMS, QBO enhancements & more !

New Improvements to DEAR

 

What’s new?

 

  • QuickBooks sync improvements made to better handle errors/issues and automatically resolve some problematic sync issues.

 

  • WooCommerce: “Check compatibility with DEAR” button added to allow users to verify if connected store properly supports APi requests from DEAR.

 

  • API: added webhook type “Sale Shipping tracking number changed” to API management.

 

  • Printing discounted prices in sales: if discounted price is greater than price as per product price tier, negative discount (markup) won’t get reported as discount

 

  • Shopify: Added support for multiple location mapping (new Shopify feature). Stock level updates now will update stock for products based on location mapping table and only for locations current product variant is linked to in Shopify.

 

DEAR POS Improvements:

 

  • Surcharges

 

  • Support for serial number costing method products to verify and enter/scan serial numbers when selling on POS

 

  • Ordering: Generate purchase order from POS for manual set of products or using low on stock data

 

  • Ordering: Stock transfer order from POS to order stock from different location into current outlet

 

  • POS dashboard

 

  • POS reporting. Sales reports, Product performance report, Inventory reports, Gift Card report, Surcharges report

 

  • POS layout has been adapted for use on smartphone

 

  • Customize layout on POS register: number of rows/columns for tiles and if tiles should contain images

 

  • Allow to select Sale Rep in POS sales

 

DEAR WMS App:

 

  • Added functionality for Purchase Put Away, Stock receiving with PO.

 

Stock Transfer Module:

 

  • Added Stock Transfer Order step (can be skipped). Allows to authorise and print stock transfer order. Authorised order works similar to sale order. Allocating stock in From location, and counts as On Order in To location. In Transit status for Stock transfer also counts as On Order in To Location. New statuses: Ordered, Picking. Picking status is assigned when there are lines in transfer details but not yet authorised. API endpoint added to manage Stock Transfer Order. Documentation can be found here.

 

  • Also we added new notification type and template for stock transfer order.

 

Assembly module:

 

  • Added support for manual journals after completion of assembly.

New Release 05-May-2018, Purchase Module Enhancements, Xero Wizard, GDPR compliance & more !

New Improvements to DEAR

 

What’s new?

 

  • New Service-Only Purchase added to the Purchasing module.

 

  • New Stand-alone Purchase Credit Note added to the Purchasing module.

 

  • DEAR API updated to support advanced purchases, new endpoints added.

 

  • Improved handling of on account and layby sales and payments in DEAR POS.

 

  • Clone/Keep PO option has been restored for a simple purchase.

 

  • Combined purchases status fields added to Purchase List general view (hidden by default).

 

  • Xero Connection Wizard which allows you to now switch a DEAR Organisation from one Xero organisation to another – (historical data export from specified date will be in the next release).

 

  • System Activity report added – Not all events are currently logged, we will fill it with more events tracking as we go.

 

  • Notifications Module now has a reminders feature added to it.

 

  • Pseudonymise action on customer page added – We added this option to remove all sensitive data values from a customer and related sales to comply with (GDPR).

 

  • Partial Stocktake with product filtering added.

New Release 29-Apr-2018, Advanced Purchase Module, Xero enhancements, DEAR B2B Portal enhancements & more !

New Improvements to DEAR

 

What’s new?

 

New Advanced Purchase Module allows multiple stock receiving’s/invoices and credit notes per single purchase order:

 

 

  • Purchases view screen has changed to show 2 types of views for more detailed presentation and better filter options: General view / Accounting View

 

Shipping Integration Improvements

 

  • If you are currently using Shipstation, Starshipit or Shippit integrations you now have the ability to generate shipping labels directly in DEAR once you are at the shipping stage of the sales process.

 

  • Carrier/Shipping service field has been added to the Sale Order header.

 

B2B Portal Enhancements

 

  • Option for a customer using B2B portal to email order/invoice from B2B portal to have a record other than just in DEAR.

 

  • Allow quantity to be shown for products within a family on the bulk order screen.

 

  • You can now choose if shipping option prices should be displayed on the checkout page.

 

  • Additional Stock Availability Display – “In Stock” (green), ” Out of Stock” (red), “Display Quantity” (green), if there is a stock outage but also a quantity on order the B2B Portal will display “Coming Soon” (amber)

 

Notification Module Enhancements

 

  • Scheduled Reporting is now available in the notifications module. Set up reports to generate automatically daily, weekly or monthly and have them distributed to the relevant staff members automatically without users intervention.

 

  • Sale Notifications can now be sent to the sale rep in charge of the sale.

 

Xero Integration Enhancements

 

  • You can now schedule automatic synchronisation to Xero. Emails with details of the sync results will be sent out to specified mailing list or individual user specified on the Xero integration page.

 

  • Purchase & Sale attachments are now exported to Xero.

 

DEAR POS Enhancements

 

  • POS price label printing – improved price labels layout and ability to print on mobile device via Google Cloud Print.

 

Other Systemwide Improvements

 

  • You now have the ability to list service type products to eCommerce integrations

 

  • Customer Credits view has a new filter “Outstanding Credits only”

New Release 1-Apr-2018, Xero enhancement, Tasks Module, Zappier Integration & more !

New Improvements to DEAR

 

What’s new? 

 

  • Tasks module – Tasks module works in conjunction with DEAR Notifications module and allows you to setup a workflow process for a Purchase, Sale, Supplier, Customer, Credit Note, Assembly & Dissasembly’s. Workflow’s can include several steps and user roles that might be required to successfully complete a sale transaction. Roles could be Sales Reps, Accounting Department, Warehouse Staff, Marketing & Management.

 

  • New Notifications have been added: Task has been created, Task has been assigned, Task has been completed, Sale Quote created, Sale attachment added (external notification), Sale custom attribute values changed.

 

  • Improved import of chart of accounts from Xero/QuickBooks. Now if account code changes in Xero or QBO, the related account code will be automatically updated in DEAR for all related transactions.

 

  • Improved handling of different Xero exceptional cases (errors on data export) with better explanation texts on how to rectify errors.

 

  • Optional sale invoice attachment export to Xero.

 

  • Zapier integration now available – It requires both DEAR API and Notifications module purchased.

 

  • Unit Cost field added on product availability screen ( It will need to be enabled from the gear drop-down).

 

  • Sync Short Description field between DEAR and WooCommerce on listing/catalog download.

 

  • Ship to Different Company feature has been improved to allow you to search from the list of existing customers.

 

  • DEAR POS tax treatment improved: If a customer is selected at POS level, tax rule of that customer will be used by default in the sale if a product has no sale tax rule associated with it at product level.

New Release 11-Mar-2018, Gift Cards Support, Shipping Zones, Shippit Integration & more !

New Improvements to DEAR

 

What’s new?

 

  • Stock Transfer function has been improved to support stock ” In Transit ” scenarios. New fields “Stock Sent Date”, “In Transit Account” & Stock Received Date” have been added to the stock transfer function. Further in addition to this, new mail merge fields have been added to StockTransfer mail merge table: DateSent, DateReceived, InTransitAccount.

 

  • New mail merge fields added in Purchase/Sale mail merge table: TotalOrderDiscount, TotalQuoteDiscount, TotalInvoiceDiscount.

 

  • Product Management Enhancement – If a product is linked to an external sales channel e.g. Magento & Woocommerce, you can now view descriptions of this product in DEAR that are displayed in either of these channels.

 

  • Gift Cards are now supported in POS and B2B.

 

  • Shipping Zones have been updated to introduce special shipping zones that forbid shipment to a specified destination.

 

  • Integration with Shippit and Shipstation enhanced which allows DEAR to get shipping rate estimates (in-app and B2B).

 

  • An option has been added to B2B portal settings to set Minimum Order Amounts.