Let’s take a look at the best free inventory software for small business which you can use without having to pay a dime. No matter if you run a small online business or you just require keeping track of your valuables, these inventory management software can help you track down anything from your stock up to your current position.
Are you an online business with low capitalized but need to track the inventory? Here are few most popular free inventory management tools to manage your inventory.
OneUp
Pricing: Starts at $9/month
OneUp is another double-entry accounting solution. It syncs with your bank, categorizes bank entries, and validates suggested entries so your books are done quickly and accurately. All told, those elements amount to roughly 95% automation of your accounting.
Best for Businesses Focused on Inventory Management
OneUp might be best known for its inventory management capabilities. The program automatically adjusts your inventory levels as they shift and tells you when to reorder.
That’s not to say that the software’s other features aren’t impressive — but if you’re primarily in the market for an exceptional inventory management solution, check OneUp out.
ZipBooks.
ZipBooks is a simple and powerful accounting software tool that can help you take your business to the next level. It is a web-based software that can help you streamline all your accounting activities.
Key Features:
- Accounting – Offers a complete and straightforward accounting solution. Create ledgers, bank reconciliation statements, balance sheets, trial balance, income statements, and more
- Billing – One-time, recurring billing so that you get paid faster
- Expenses – Smart and automated expenses tracker
- Intelligence – Offers you a full suite of tools to generate and gather actionable reports and insights to keep you on track. You can generate business health score, invoice quality score, and perform smart searches
- Synchronicity – You can synchronize all your bank accounts and secure all your financial details
- Team Management – Allows all the team members to access the same data in real-time for effective collaboration
Pros:
- Allows sending of unlimited invoices
- Can manage unlimited vendors and customers
- 30-day free trial period
- Syncs with Microsoft Excel and Lite plans
- You can send invoices in multiple currencies
- You can accept digital payment via PayPal or Square and access accounts receivable plans
- Enables you to send custom quotes and estimates
- Cloud-based software that makes it inexpensive and easy to use
- Phone and email customer support available
- Has an excellent free accounting software plan for freemium user and bookkeepers in addition to a quality premium plan
- ‘Accountant’ custom plan provides excellent features like texting clients directly, time tracking across client accounts, bulk transactions editing, and a single dashboard for holistic client management
Cons:
- Supports only English
- No option for on premise-deployment
- There is no live-chat or ticket-based customer support
Pricing:
ZipBooks offers four pricing plans. The ‘Starter’ plan is an excellent freemium plan, while the paid plans start from $15. You also get a quote-based plan, for which you need to contact their sales team to get a quote.
Boxstorm: Best for Ecommerce and QuickBooks Integrations
Overall Score: 3.24 OUT OF 5 i
What We Like
- QuickBooks integration
- Multiple integrations, API
- Mobile app
What’s Missing
- Limited items and transactions
- No variants
- No kitting or bundling
Boxstorm Free Plan Pricing and Limits:
- Users: One
- Locations: One
- Items: 25
- Transactions: 100 per month
- Paid Plan: $79 per month
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
When to Upgrade
Boxstorm’s free plan contains all the features of the paid plan, so the only reason to upgrade is if you need to handle more transactions or items. The paid plan offers unlimited locations, items, and transactions for $79 per month for one user. If you need more users, you can add them for $9 per month.
SalesBinder: Best Free Inventory Management Software for Limited Products
Overall Score: 3.18 OUT OF 5 i
What We Like
- 100 records per month limit
- Variations, photos, categories
- Customer Relationship Management
What’s Missing
- No integrations
- Limited items
- No Mobile App
SalesBinder Free Plan Pricing and Limits:
- Users: One
- Items: 100 records per month (records are inventory items, accounts, or orders)
- Paid Plans start at: $9 per month
SalesBinder offers an intuitive interface with lots of room for customization. Its free plan has a monthly records limit but its robust features for recording and tracking inventory, plus the sales and customer relationship management features make it a great pick for businesses with limited products.
Overall, SalesBinder scored a 3.18 out of 5 in our evaluation. It performed well in the inventory features and expert score categories. SalesBinder could’ve scored better if it had no product or user limits.
SalesBinder Free Inventory Features
This is a sample view of an inventory item inside your SalesBinder dashboard. You can see your item supplier, the item’s selling price, stock, and any backorders you have from purchase orders and its estimated date of arrival. (Source: SalesBinder)
- Five photos per item
- Track items by location
- Kitting/bundling
- Custom fields
- Item variations
- Bar code scanning
- Account management for customers, prospects, and suppliers
- Note additional expenses for profit analysis
- Invoices, estimates, purchase orders
- Inventory and sales reports
- Set user permissions
When to Upgrade
The free plan includes all the features of the paid plans, except for integrations. The only limits are to records and users. If you need more users, records, or integrations, the paid plans are among the most affordable we’ve seen. The paid plans range from $9 per month for one user, 2,500 records, and no integrations, to $99 per month for 100,000 records, 50 users, and unlimited integrations. It also has unlimited records pricing plans.
Odoo: Best Free Inventory Management Software for Warehouses and Dropshipping
Overall Score: 4.21 OUT OF 5 i
What We Like
- Inventory forecasting
- Sales and customer portal
- Order points and automated requests for bids
What’s Missing
- No customizations
- No integrations, only with other Odoo apps
Odoo Free Plan Pricing and Limits:
- Users: Unlimited
- Locations: Unlimited
- Items: Unlimited
- Transactions: Unlimited
- Paid Plans: $36 per month if you use it with other Odoo apps
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 dropshippers 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
A look at Odoo’s mobile app on an Android device. Inventory is just part of a network of Odoo applications.
(Source: Google’s Play Store)
When to Upgrade
Odoo Inventory is free forever as long as it’s the only Odoo app you use. However, if you need to integrate other functions such as accounting or purchase orders, then you would need to upgrade and to use other Odoo applications. Since it is only designed to work with other Odoo applications, like Sales, Purchase, or Accounting, your choice will be limited and if you add these applications, you will then be charged a subscription price for Inventory, plus the other apps. This can add up fast.
Zoho Inventory: Best Free Inventory Management Software for Growing Businesses
Overall Score: 3.98 OUT OF 5 i
What We Like
- Cloud-based
- Kitting capabilities
- Shipping management tools
- Ecommerce integrations
What’s Missing
- Sales and purchase order limits
- Lacks Bill of Material (BOM), pick lists, or bin ID support
- No forecasting, only supports FIFO costing
Zoho Inventory Free Plan Pricing and Limits:
- Users: Two
- Locations: One
- Items/products: Unlimited
- Transactions: 50 orders/month
- Paid Plans start at: $79/month with monthly billing
For its free plan, Zoho Inventory gives you a lot of inventory features that will give room for your business to grow. It provides low-stock alerts, kitting and bundling options, and multiple integrations to ecommerce platforms, CRM, and payment gateways. It also gives you shipping tools, allowing you to print packing slips and generate shipping labels.
Based on our evaluation, Zoho Inventory earned a 3.98 out of 5, earning perfect marks from our experts and its ease of use. Zoho’s free plan limits such as limits on sales orders, shipping labels, and shipment tracking, as well as the absence of real-time and multi-location tracking, prevented it from getting a higher score. However, overall Zoho offers great value and earned the top spot in our evaluation of the best inventory management software for small businesses.
Zoho Inventory Free Inventory Features
Zoho Inventory’s dashboard is the first thing you’ll see when you log in to your account. It gives you a picture of your company’s sales and stock summary such as the sales orders you have generated so far, top-selling items, stock purchased from your vendor for the selected period, and more. (Source: Zoho.com)
- Item grouping and bundling
- Serial and batch tracking
- Sales order management
- Invoicing
- Packaging and shipping
- Barcode scanning
- Backorders and drop shipments
- Purchase order templates
- SKU generator
- Reorder points
- iOS and Android mobile apps
Zoho Inventory’s mobile app dashboard view.
RightControl: Best for ecommerce businesses
3.8
- Starting from $0.00/mo.
Pick-and-pack feature for online order management
Barcode generation
Data effective 7/23/21. At publishing time, features are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.
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. As we already mentioned, it doesn’t support multiple warehouses. But it also limits you to just 10 inventory lines, meaning you’re limited to just 10 product categories.
Conclusion
A business should keep track of its inventory to ensure that it has enough stock to provide to customers. There are several inventory management software for small businesses, which will help businesses monitor their inventories. One of the most important tasks for a business is inventory management. Inventory management is essentially the process of monitoring the levels of stocks, tracking items being sold, and making sure that there are adequate supplies for future demand.