If you run a small business then you’re probably looking for the best free inventory management software free download. Inventory software is important for small businesses as it helps them manage their products and services. Unless it can help to manage your day-to-day activities, you might want to rethink the solution and look for something else.
Looking for the best inventory software to tie numbers to your products and inventory items? Or do you want to know more about the best free inventory management app? Are you looking for the best free open source inventory application? Are you wondering what is the best free inventory software? Then check this out and explore our top recommendations.
Boxstorm
Created by Fishbowl Inventory, Boxstorm delivers a fully-featured and user-friendly interface that integrates with eCommerce and QuickBooks. The limits on item numbers and transactions make it useful for smaller businesses, but if you grow beyond the free version, it offers an affordable paid plan.
Boxstorm earned an overall score of 3.24 out of 5 on our inventory management ranking system. It earned stellar marks for its inventory features—such as barcoding, cycle counting, and automated reordering—but its transaction and inventory item limits prevented it from scoring higher.
Boxstorm Free Inventory Features
Here is a sample view of Boxstorm’s Sales module. You can assign per-customer elements such as tax rates and discounts. Sales order line items include sale, misc. sale, misc. credits, notes, and per-line discounts.
(Source: Fishbowlinventory.com)
- Barcoding
- Up to five photos per item
- Scan items and apply action to an entire list (ex: location change)
- Sales and purchase orders
- Set min/max stock levels; email stock alerts
- Cycle counting
- Returns processing
- Automated reorder for low-inventory
- Native integrations with QuickBooks Online, Shopify, BigCommerce, Stripe, and Shippo
- API available for custom integrations
inFlow On-Premise
inFlow On-Premise (the free, local software version of inFlow’s more robust cloud solution) packs a punch.
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.
inFlow On-Premise also provides in-depth reporting on your inventory, and it allows you to set up structured workflows that help you track the sales process from order to payment. inFlow On-Premise is also barcode compatible, so you can use barcode scanners to look up items and add them to your orders. You can even scan items using one of the best free inventory apps on the market.
The downsides: While inFlow Cloud allows you to integrate with eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopify, the On-Premise version offers only Shopify integration. It also doesn’t accommodate kitting, accounting integrations, or product variations. And once you hit 100 products or customers, the system stops allowing you to add more without upgrading to the inFlow Cloud service.
You should also keep in mind that inFlow is a PC inventory software, so you’ll need to install a virtual copy of Windows if you want to use the system on a Mac.
All of that should be fine, though, if you’re trying to manage inventory for a small business or you’re just dipping your toes into inventory management software to see if it’s worth the trouble.
Odoo
Odoo offers its inventory management app for free as a standalone product. The inventory app alone contains nearly every function you need for straight inventory processing. However, there is a fee to connect other Odoo products. With no limits on users, locations, or items, Odoo is a great choice for warehouses and drop shippers with high-volume sales.
Based on our evaluation, Odoo earned a 4.21 out of 5, earning high marks for its unlimited allocation for users, items, transactions, and warehouse locations even on its free plan. The lack of integrations available prevented the software from earning a perfect score.
Odoo Free Inventory Features
From the dashboard, you can access all activities such as delivery orders, receptions, dropshipping, or keep an eye on backorders and laid items. (Source: Odoo.com)
- Handles digital products and consumables
- Double-entry inventory management (items are moved rather than removed)
- Unlimited products, users, locations
- Multiple locations, including zones, rows, shelves, and more
- Barcode scanning
- Cycle counting
- Scrap products, transfer stock
- Custom alerts on products or suppliers
- Schedule inventory operations based on product availabilities or order forecasting
- Automated request for quotes
- Barcode or serial number tracking
- Custom fields, expiration dates, multiple units of measurement
- Multiple valuations: FIFO, LIFO, Average Cost, Landed Costs, and more
Square for Retail
- Free plan: Includes payment management, cart management, barcode scanning, customer management, etc.
- Paid plans: Start at $60 per location per month and include advanced features such as inventory transfers, purchase management, and vendor management.
Square for Retail is a cloud-based retail management and POS system that helps businesses manage online and offline retail operations. Key features include website builder, inventory management, order management, checkout and payment management, and reporting.
The inventory management features available with Square’s free plan include stock tracking and counting. The free version also includes low stock alerts that notify users when the inventory levels drop below the critical order volume. This helps you initiate inventory replenishment before stock outages impact normal operations.
Square’s customer support options include phone, email, live chat, social media, and a self-service knowledge base.
Zoho Inventory
Best Free Inventory Management Software for Overall Functionality
Zoho, the company that produces the Zoho Books accounting software, also offers inventory management software that includes a free plan option. With a variety of built-in features, Zoho Inventory is a well-known tool for automating inventory management, order fulfillment, and sales processes.
Zoho Inventory is web-based software and provides a mobile app to give you the ability to manage your inventory anywhere you have an internet connection. On the whole, Zoho Inventory offers capabilities such as:
- Centralized inventory control, including product listing, stock adjustments, barcode management, kitting, and automatic re-ordering
- Shipping management, including packing slips, shipping labels, and dropshipping
- Order fulfillment, including composite items, backorders, and shipment tracking
- Multi-channel selling: sell on multiple channels and connect orders and inventory across channels
- Invoicing and billing for customers, including multi-currency and multi-lingual
- Inventory reports and sales dashboard
- Integrations for ecommerce, Shopify stores, shipping services, payment gateways, accounting software, CRM software, and Google Suite
Zoho gives you the ability to sign up for their platform and utilize their inventory management software free of charge, but the free version has its limitations. With the free inventory software from Zoho, you’ll be restricted to:
- Two users
- One warehouse
- 50 orders per month
- 50 invoices and 20 bills per month
- 50 shipping labels per month
- 50 tracked shipments per month
- One Shopify store integration
Additionally, the free Zoho inventory software does not offer item tracking based on serial or batch number.
With the four Zoho Inventory paid plans, on the other hand, you’ll receive greater monthly capabilities as the plans increase in price, as well as a few advanced features, depending on the specific plan. That said, the free inventory software option from Zoho does, indeed, provide core tools for managing inventory, sales, and orders—as long as you can fall within their specific number limitations.
In particular, for a free inventory management system, Zoho offers impressive integration and mobile options. Therefore, if you’re a small business that can fall within Zoho’s limitations, this free inventory software platform is going to be one of the best options out there.
PartKeepr
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.
Currently, PartKeepr allows you to track inventory levels for both your finished goods and your components, and it doesn’t put a cap on the number of products or vendors you’re allowed to track in your system. 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 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. PartKeepr also doesn’t offer any eCommerce integrations—though that shouldn’t be a huge deal for most manufacturers.
The final thing to remember is that PartKeepr is 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.
Conclusion:
There are various inventory management software free download or inventory management software open source. It is important for small business owners to make the right choice before moving on to the next step. Knowing what options you have and comparing them with your needs can make it easier for you to make a decision and select the inventory management system that will work best for your small business.