Manufacturing inventory software enables SME businesses to ensure effective inventory oversight and control at all times.
Inventory management and tracking are essential for manufacturers, and for almost every business that buys or sells products. Without it, companies are bound to lose control over their working capital and end up increasing their operating costs.
This may significantly impact their overall production and supply chain processes.
In this blog, we will walk you through the basics of inventory management while exploring the best inventory management software for manufacturing businesees to streamline your processes.
You will also discover the key features of manufacturing inventory software, types of inventory methods, and the benefits of inventory management software for the manufacturing sector.
Best Manufacturing Inventory Software
Choosing the right inventory management system is key to gaining higher inventory oversight and control. Let's discuss five worthy alternatives for manufacturing inventory management software that you can choose from:
TranZact
TranZact is a comprehensive inventory management software with bill of material. It is a cloud-based solution for business automation, offering reports and real-time insights. TranZact Inventory is designed specifically for Indian SME manufacturers and integrates essential operations for this sector.
This includes production management, quotations and inventory, sales and purchases, and material requirements planning.
It is the best inventory management software for the manufacturing industry because of its advanced stock management capabilities. This includes the ability to monitor stock on a timely basis, set and view minimum and maximum stock levels, enable inventory optimization, and more.
Features:
- TranZact's manufacturing inventory system provides barcode tracking for smooth inventory monitoring and management. Barcode scanning system also supports automated updation of stock on the portal.
- With TranZact's smart dashboard, you can analyze inventory numbers easily and make data-backed decisions.
- Real-time inventory insights enable you to create realistic forecasts, stay prepared for the future market and deliver accordingly.
- With TranZact, you can categorize inventory based on different material types and costs.
- You can also access multiple stores simultaneously, and remotely. This helps inventory managers to restock or control purchases as required.
Pros:
- TranZact enables the automation of purchase and re-ordering processes by allowing teams to track goods and raw materials across stores with ease.
- Live monitoring of excess stock helps businesses to save significant working capital.
- Inventory integration with sales and production modules is another important advantage provided by TranZact's manufacturing inventory management software.
- This manufacturing inventory system enhances collaboration and data utilization across departments for improved decision-making.
- It also offers top-notch and dedicated customer support for an unlimited period, with both free and advanced plans.
Read Also - Inventory Analysis: Tips, Benefits, and KPIs
Zoho Inventory
Zoho Inventory is a cloud-based inventory management software that helps businesses track and manage their inventory, orders, and deliveries. It allows users to create and manage product lists, create purchase orders and vendor contracts, track inventory levels, and generate reports on sales and performance.
Features:
- Zoho Inventory helps you to automatically update inventory status with the help of barcodes.
- The order management system lets you track inventory status and receive real-time updates.
Pros:
- It offers live chat and phone support to resolve customer issues.
- It provides effective inventory tracking and enables you to create and manage relevant documents.
Cons:
- Their paid plans may not be the most budget-friendly alternative for SMEs.
Read Also - What Is a Periodic Inventory System?
Oracle Netsuite
Oracle NetSuite is a cloud-based business management software suite that offers a range of applications for financials, customer relationship management, e-commerce, and more.
It helps businesses automate and streamline their operations, improve efficiency, and make better data-driven decisions. It is a comprehensive solution that can be customized to fit the specific needs of different industries and organizations.
Features:
- Oracle Netsuite offers inventory auditing features to track the type and cost of each inventory.
- Warehouse management ensures you stay updated on the movement of raw and finished materials ‘in transit', or in the warehouse.
Pros:
- It offers active customer and documentation support.
- It supports warehouse management for businesses.
Cons:
- This inventory management software is not affordable for SMEs because of its high licensing and user fee.
- Its features are not highly suitable for Indian SME manufacturers.
Read Also - Which Software Is Recommended For Inventory Management?
Quickbooks Commerce
Quickbooks Commerce assists companies in creating a seamless workflow for eliminating inventory management issues. It helps to mitigate losses due to sudden stock updates and the obsolescence of materials.
Features:
- It handles multi-channel sales with inventory control and optimization functions.
- It helps to supervise purchase, sales, and order management with automation.
Pros:
- The software enables an effective view of quantities on hand, to track reordering processes.
- It also provides customer support to companies.
Cons:
- This software is not the most suitable choice for SMEs because it does not come with a free package or a trial option.
- The quoted prices may be too high as compared to other available options.
inFlow
inFlow is an inventory management software that helps businesses track and manage their inventory, orders, and sales. It provides tools for forecasting demand, generating reports, and optimizing inventory levels to reduce waste and increase efficiency.
With inFlow, businesses can improve their supply chain management, streamline their operations, and make informed decisions about their inventory.
Features:
- It allows users to manage and track past orders.
- The software simplifies invoice processing and acknowledgment receipts.
- It provides barcode scanning and reporting functions.
Pros:
- It offers a free trial for users.
- A maximum of six hours of setup support is provided.
Cons:
- Phone and chat support is limited.
- Features might vary based on case-to-case requirements.
Read Also - Best Barcode Inventory Software in 2023
What Is Manufacturing Inventory Software?
Manufacturing inventory software automates the importance of inventory levels across various stages. It streamlines inventory movement from the ordering stage to warehouse management, manufacturing, and point of sale, ensuring streamlined inventory movement.
Effective inventory management is crucial for businesses to meet production and order management needs by ensuring the availability of the right materials at the right time.
Implementing inventory management software for the manufacturing industry streamlines production automates inventory tasks, and eliminates human errors. It helps with addressing challenges like unknown item availability, excess inventory, and stockouts that can arise with manual inventory management.
Manufacturing inventory management software fosters coordination among multiple departments such as sales, logistics, production, and purchasing, making it an essential tool for simplifying inventory operations.
Types of Inventory Methods
There are four main types of inventory methods used by businesses to manage their inventory and determine the cost of goods sold. These methods are:
First-In, First-Out (FIFO)
FIFO assumes that the first items purchased or produced are the first ones to be sold or used. Under this method, the cost of the oldest inventory is assigned to the cost of goods sold (COGS), while the cost of the most recent purchases is allocated to the ending stock. FIFO is commonly used when the inventory turnover is rapid or when perishable items are involved.
Last-In, First-Out (LIFO)
LIFO assumes that the most recent items purchased or produced are the first ones to be sold or used. In this method, the cost of the newest inventory is assigned to the COGS, and the cost of the oldest stock is allocated to the ending stock. LIFO is often used when there are inflationary conditions because it can result in lower taxable income due to higher COGS.
Weighted Average Cost
This method calculates the average cost of all items in inventory. The weighted average cost assigns the average cost to both the COGS and the ending inventory. To determine the average cost, the total cost of all units is divided by the total number of units. This method is straightforward and useful when inventory items are homogenous and have similar costs.
Singular Identification
Singular identification involves individually tracking the cost of each item in inventory. It matches the actual cost of each item sold or used with the corresponding sale or usage.
This method is applicable when items in inventory are unique or have distinct costs. It provides the most precise matching of costs but can be complex to implement, especially for businesses with large inventories.
Read Also - What Is Production Planning Software?
Key Features of Manufacturing Inventory Software
Let's look at the important features within a manufacturing inventory software that enable you to increase your returns on investment (ROI):
Interlinked with Bill of Material inputs
Without generating a Bill of Material (BOM) a manufacturing company cannot proceed with process planning and production. Thus, automating the process of BOM creation and management becomes crucial.
An efficient manufacturing inventory software should be integrated with the production module to ensure a seamless flow of BOM inputs. This ensures that inventory teams are in sync with production requirements at all times.
Inventory costing
Inventory costing refers to the process of assigning and allocating costs to inventory items. It involves determining the cost of acquiring or producing inventory and tracking how these costs are allocated to the inventory on hand.
The decided value usually comprises additional expenses incurred such as storage and handling. Software that automates this process for you, will support you in ensuring optimum stock valuation and costing. This enables orders to be fulfilled, without disrupting budget projections.
Real-time inventory tracking
While inventory tracking is also done with legacy systems, they hold you back from getting real-time updates, creating further confusion and delay at the ground level.
Select a manufacturing inventory management software that provides live updates on how much stock is left, where it's based, and when you might need to restock. This feature significantly improves inventory transparency and enhances decision-making for the management.
Barcoding support
The best inventory management software for manufacturing will allow you to automate stock processes with the help of barcode scanning. To get real-time stock updates and save time on manual updation, having a barcoding system within the inventory module is essential.
Purchase and sales integration
One of the most important things to look for in manufacturing inventory software is the automation capability to raise and track purchase and sales orders. When inventory is connected with all transactions including both purchases and sales, it saves businesses a lot of effort and time.
By adopting inventory management software with a bill of material integration, barcode scanning functionality, and similar features, you can ensure uninterrupted manufacturing cycles for your business.
Read Also - Best MRP Software for Small Business in 2023
Benefits of Manufacturing Inventory Software
Inventory automation with manufacturing inventory software has many benefits. It empowers your company to scale by increasing overall productivity and efficiency.
Let's take a deeper look into the benefits of a manufacturing inventory system.
Higher material and inventory control
A manufacturing inventory software ensures you're able to track inventory in real-time with minimal manual effort. With this improved inventory and material control mechanism, business owners can consistently maintain optimum inventory levels to meet demands, avoid stock obsolescence, and reduce operational costs. This also ensures that production costs are reduced for better profitability.
Dashboards
With the help of a live dashboard, you can see and share inventory movement numbers across every department. Manual effort on data collation for reporting and analysis is minimized through this. Making decisions by forecasting potential possibilities, based on past patterns also becomes significantly easier.
Integration
Seamless inventory integration with inventory software allows different departments, including production, sales, and accounting, to improve functions with live inventory insights.
Cross-functional integration in a manufacturing business enables easy processing of current orders. It facilitates monitoring of upcoming sales and deliveries based on optimum inventory levels and reduces delays.
Better customer experience
Manufacturing inventory software naturally improves customer service and goodwill for your business by leading to high-quality products. It provides an exceptional, digitized customer support system, thereby creating memorable customer experiences.
Modern support tools such as chatbots enable seamless customer relationship management to ensure your brand has a credible foothold in the market.
Who Needs Manufacturing Inventory Software?
Inventory management software for the manufacturing industry is an automated solution that can help companies scale. But in order to leverage it and reap the benefits of such a system, you need to ensure that you're selecting the right solution for your business needs.
Analyzing your requirements and the kind of buyer you are helps to assess your need for a manufacturing inventory software.
1. Downright buyers
This category includes buyers seeking a comprehensive solution to integrate various modules and departments, ensuring transparency and alignment with the inventory. If you think complete integration is what you need for your inventory operations, going for a business automation solution like TranZact can help.
2. Distributed manufacturers
One of the many reasons why managing inventory becomes a task is because of the complexity of multi-location businesses. If your production is set up in a particular state but your raw materials are stored and imported from other states, you would need a more capable solution. This solution should manage multi-location inventory while providing adequate functionalities for the same.
3. Small and medium enterprises
Inventory management is one of the most important processes for small and medium enterprises, and losing control over inventory can be loss-making for them. Apart from singularly managing inventory, SMEs have to monitor many other issues on a regular basis, since they invest efforts to grow at a rapid pace.
Small and medium-scale businesses need to adopt manufacturing inventory software that is specially built for their industry and their needs. TranZact is designed specifically for SME manufacturers and helps you to grow and achieve your business goals faster.
Grow Your Business With a Reliable Manufacturing Inventory Software
TranZact is recommended by over 10,000 Indian SMEs for a centralized inventory solution, integrated with production, sales, accounting, and purchases. In addition to effortless inventory management, TranZact also provides multilevel bill of material functionalities to plan production and material requirements without delays.
It offers exception inventory control by setting maximum and minimum stock levels, real-time inventory valuation, and other features such as barcode tracking, and auto stock adjustment. It also comes with smart business dashboards for ease of operations and inventory analysis.
Try TranZact; it offers a free trial option of the advanced plan; it's reliable, and trusted by 10,000+ Indian SMEs. You can upgrade to the paid advanced plan from the free base plan only when you're ready.
FAQs on Manufacturing Inventory Software
1. What is manufacturing inventory software?
Manufacturing inventory software is a system that helps businesses track and manage their inventory throughout the manufacturing process. It provides features such as inventory tracking, demand forecasting, production planning, order management, and reporting to optimize inventory levels and improve overall operational efficiency.
2. How to manage inventory in manufacturing?
Inventory in manufacturing can be managed through effective planning, data-driven forecasting, tracking, and optimizing production, and procurement activities.
3. How to control inventory in a manufacturing company?
Inventory in a manufacturing company can be controlled by adopting an automated and robust inventory management system. An inventory control system ensures complete visibility over all inventory operations with minimal effort, saving time and resources for a manufacturing business.
4. What are the 4 inventory methods?
The four main inventory methods used in businesses are First-In, First-Out (FIFO), Last-In, First-Out (LIFO), Singular Identification, and Weighted Average Cost.
5. What is TranZact Inventory?
TranZact Inventory is an easy-to-use, cloud-based manufacturing inventory software designed to provide real-time inventory insights to business owners. It offers barcode scanning, physical stock reconciliation, vendor mapping, and centralized inventory reports with a graphical view of price trends. These features simplify inventory management to a great extent for SMEs.
6. What is the best inventory method for manufacturing?
The FIFO (First-In, First-Out) method is considered the best inventory method for manufacturing businesses as it accounts for the oldest inventory to be sold first. This helps ensure that the cost of goods sold reflects the actual cost of acquiring or producing the items, prevents wastage, and leads to a more accurate measure of inventory value.
7. How do manufacturing companies track inventory?
Many manufacturing companies still rely on paper-based documentation and manual audits to track inventory, which can lead to delayed detection of inventory losses. However, forward-thinking manufacturing SMEs are adopting automated inventory management software like TranZact to lower inventory costs and ensure effective inventory control.
8. Which software is best for inventory management?
If we consider all important parameters, such as the inventory functionalities of the software, benefits, reliability, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness, TranZact is the best software for inventory management.
