It also includes kitting capabilities for bundles of products that can be sold together and alerts that can be triggered anytime your stock drops below an acceptable level. Unlike a lot of other options on our list, Zoho also offers shipping management tools, so you can easily schedule and track shipments, print packing slips, and generate shipping labels.
Plus, the software includes tons of integrations for ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. The downsides: Zoho imposes one of the strictest limits on sales and purchase orders only 20 per month. It also limits you to just 12 shipments per month, and the real-time tracking can be a bit buggy compared to smoother paid services.
In addition to tracking your inventory levels, this app can help you track completed and pending payments, generate purchase orders, process invoices, and more. It can also track costs for each item, helping you produce a more accurate cost of goods sold COGS calculation as part of your accounting.
You can even scan items using one of the best free inventory apps on the market. And once you hit products or customers, the system stops allowing you to add more without upgrading to the inFlow Cloud service. You can still purchase the software, but there will not be any more new features or bug fixes. For regularly updated inventory software, inFlow Cloud is available for purchase. As the only enterprise resource planning ERP inventory software on our list, Odoo goes beyond simple inventory tracking and reorder point reminders.
Odoo includes tons of high-end functionality, including customer relationship management CRM , point-of-sale, human resource, project management, and business management features.
It even includes a customer portal where your clients can log in and view the status of their orders. You can also manage multiple warehouses, complete material resource planning MRP , and route products directly from your supplier to your customer for faster order fulfillment.
And we love that Odoo lets you sell on multiple sales channels and integrate them all into your system. The downsides: Oddly enough, Odoo offers virtually no integrations, even with major shipping and ecommerce providers.
To make matters worse, businesses may outgrow the free version very quickly, at which point it may be more cost-efficient to consider a different ERP service. Odoo 14 came out in October and is free to download for Windows. RightControl is a good choice for ecommerce businesses because it offers excellent warehouse management features—even if it does limit you to just one warehouse. With RightControl, you can not only use a barcode scanner to track inventory and allocate stock but also generate new barcodes and assign them to individual items.
That makes it easy for ecommerce businesses to add new products to their catalogue and keep tabs on each item in their inventory. RightControl software also allows you to create picking lists, so you can fulfill customer orders faster and more accurately. The downsides: Unfortunately, RightControl does have some limitations. PartKeepr is a free, open-source inventory software. That means other users can add functionality to the program as needed.
The result? PartKeepr keeps getting better and adding more features over time—all while remaining completely free. So manufacturers that need to keep tabs on materials, components, and finished products have the flexibility to do it. PartKeepr also offers multiple-warehouse management, and it allows you to group items from your production runs together in batches.
That saves you time if you find a defect within a specific run of items. The downsides: PartKeepr is a local software, meaning it lives on your computer instead of the cloud. That makes it difficult to use if you need multiple users in multiple locations to have access to your inventory numbers.
The final thing to remember is that PartKeepr is an open-source software. You can customize your inventory source system—and the software—so that it works best for your business, but you need coding experience for work. Although it's free, it will require time and possibly a paid developer on staff to make it work. Still looking for the best choice for your business? Just like our other choices, both ABC Inventory and Microsoft Excel are totally free to use and work well for inventory management.
ABC Inventory supports multiple warehouses, barcode scanning, and item tracking by location and serial number. The platform also allows you to create unlimited records for new products, so you have all the tools you need to keep tabs on tons of moving products simultaneously. Downsides: Like most of the other options on our list, ABC Inventory is a local software, which already makes it hard to allow access for multiple users. While not an inventory management software per se, Microsoft Excel nonetheless gives you a ton of flexibility to set up your inventory management system in whatever way works for you.
With Excel, you can set up custom formatting, reporting, and more. Plus, you can opt to track only the metrics that matter to you. You can also implement barcode scanning, since most barcode and QR code scanners can upload to Excel. Manual inventory management opens the door to more errors, so take that under advisement and maybe implement some kind of redundancy within your inventory system like having a trusted business partner double-check your work.
Also, to benefit the most from Microsoft Excel, you have to be fairly proficient with the program. For a cloud-based system, Zoho is an excellent choice. Or you can use inFlow, PartKeepr, Odoo, or RightControl—all of which offer basic inventory tracking, order management, and warehouse management features, plus a few standout features each.
Of course, you can always choose to create a completely customized inventory management system with Microsoft Excel. Just be prepared for a lot of manual inputting of information. None of these options working for you? You may want to consider using a premium inventory management app instead. Check out our guide to the top inventory management software on the market to get started. While it may be unavoidable in some cases, using a free inventory management platform has a number of drawbacks.
Still curious? Take a look at our SelectHub analyst curated comparison report of the top inventory management performers. How have free inventory management solutions helped or hurt your business? Let us know with a comment below! Analyst-Picked Related Content Pricing Guide: Discover the true cost of inventory management software Comparison Report: An Interactive analyst report with comparison ratings, reviews and pricing.
Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Pricing, Ratings, and Reviews for each Vendor. PLUS… Access to our online selection platform for free. Jump-start your selection project with a free, pre-built, customizable Inventory Management Tools requirements template.
Project Management. View All Software Categories. Austin Office S. Deployment: Platform:. Odoo Odoo is an open-source system for businesses of all sizes. Stockpile Stockpile provides small to medium-sized businesses with free inventory management software support. Delivrd Delivrd is a cloud-based free inventory management solution that compliments businesses of all sizes. Next Steps With the knowledge of the top contenders in the free inventory management software arena fresh in your mind, what next?
Consider a few of these questions before making the leap: What size is your team? Is there time to learn a new system? How can you be sure one system is the right fit? Final Thoughts As you can see, just because a solution is free does not mean it lacks in features or benefits. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.
Get Pricing Guide. Requirements Template for Inventory Management Software Jump-start your selection project with a free, pre-built, customizable Inventory Management Tools requirements template.
Show All Categories. GnuCash's initial setup and somewhat dated-looking interface might turn a lot of potential users off.
But if you're willing to tough out its tricky installation and don't need your accounting solution to be particularly pretty, you're left with a solid application that covers a lot of bases for free. That said, it's not much of a long-term solution for businesses anticipating a lot of growth. It's better suited for sole proprietors who need a program to get them through their day-to-day. If you fit that bill, check GnuCash out. CloudBooks is a free accounting and invoicing solution tailored to accommodate small businesses and freelancers.
The program boasts a user base of over 2 million subscribers and has a suite of capabilities that cover invoicing, time-tracking, reporting, and payment needs — among others. The platform is an invoice management solution, above all else — and that can be a benefit or drawback in its own right, depending on what you need.
While CloudBooks has features extending beyond that functionality, invoicing appears to be its main selling point — meaning it's not quite as fully fleshed out with accounting functionality as other programs listed here. So if you're looking for exceptional invoice creation and management software, you should check out Cloudbooks. If you need a more robust accounting-specific solution, you might want to look elsewhere.
Sunrise is one of the more prominent bookkeeping applications available for small businesses. Users can leverage the program to easily search and categorize business expenses, send customized invoices, and receive recurring payments. It offers a free, self-service plan that provides businesses with a decent suite of features and a fair amount of flexibility when it comes to bookkeeping — allowing for unlimited invoices and transactions.
Sunrise sets itself apart from other bookkeeping solutions with its dedicated bookkeeper services, but those services come at a hefty premium. As I mentioned, its free plan is self-service — which works for small businesses but might not be sustainable as your business expands. Ultimately, Sunrise is a straightforward, effective bookkeeping software with a free plan that can suit the needs of several small businesses. If you need a relatively short-term bookkeeping solution with a reasonable upgrade fee, Sunrise's free plan is worth checking out.
Brightbook is a web-based accounting solution tailored to suit the needs of independent contractors, freelancers, and small business owners — though it tends to work better for the former two. The program is essentially designed to democratize accounting software. It has an extensive suite of features available for free — including resources for invoicing, visibility into your cash flow, financial reporting, and drafting financial statements — along with some paid features available for one-time fees.
One area where Brightbook struggles is its lack of mobile support. The program doesn't have a mobile application, and it can't be accessed via mobile browsers. And the application itself isn't quite as sophisticated as some of the more well-established options. Still, Brightbook is a solid option for freelancers or independent contractors — specifically creative professionals.
It's a little bare-bones, but it still covers a lot of bases that other options on this list might have stuck behind paywalls. If you're looking for a comprehensive suite of accounting features and don't mind working with a relatively stripped-back program, consider checking Brightbook out.
Openbravo is an open-source software that offers mobile and cloud-based omnichannel platform for accounting and bookkeeping requirements. It claims to help in speeding up innovation for small to mid-size retail and eCommerce businesses through inventory, store operations, forecasting, logistics, and analytics solutions.
It is a comprehensive and easy-to-adopt omnichannel platform that helps you to focus more on your customers and provide them more personalized experiences across the channels. There is a community edition which is the open source version, while the Enterprise version supplements the community edition with proprietary features and services. It uses range from invoicing to managing deposits and a whole lot of other amazing features.
Also, you can utilize their hosting which again, is absolutely free or host it by yourself. FrontAccounting is an open source accounting software for small businesses that also serves as an ERP system.
It offer accounts receivable and payable, inventory, and manufacturing modules, among many others, and its can handle multi-currencies and several ventures simultaneously.
When it actually comes to picking a suitable accounting and bookkeeping software program, bsuinesses should choose from several different categories depending on the business operations. You should consider using one of these accounting software programs to meet your virtual bookkeeping needs.
Click To Tweet. And they are all free solutions and highly customizable to the needs of small businesses, even with limited programming experience. Click Here.
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