Taking inventory is one of the most boring aspects of owning a business. In fact, many small businesses don’t take inventory because they do it once or twice a year and then forget about it until their next physical count. Although very few small businesses have better inventory management software for small businesses or small business software for inventory management, some companies do offer free inventory management software for small business. Here we give you some of the best free inventory management software for small business
Are you a small business owner wanting to learn more about best inventory management software or small business software for inventory management? Consulting a software company that specializes in supply chain management and inventory software, I’ve researched and put together this list of top ten inventory management software products.
Fishbowl inventory
If Odoo was great for custom and almost universal purposes, Fishbowl inventory is a complete small business inventory software solution. Its core audiences are wholesalers, retailers, and producers who want to stay in touch with their accounting solutions. But if you think that Fishbowl is a niche tool for QBO fans, you might be wrong! Xero, Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce. Those are the loudest names from the list of supported integrations.
Fishbowl inventory platform comprises two sub-products: Fishbowl Manufacturing and Fishbowl Warehouse. Plus, the company offers additional services and hardware.
Customers appreciate the user-friendly interface and client-centric support. But some users don’t like the reporting system, as it seems not always applicable to some businesses.
Booqable
Booqable is a simple inventory control system that allows you to know what product is on your shelves, where it’s located, and how much there is. While many inventory planning systems are complicated enterprise solutions that are rarely used, Booqable offers an affordable, easy-to-use small business inventory software tool.
Booqable is a turnkey software for inventory control. It can be used to track and manage everything from the initial purchase to the end customer. It also integrates with hundreds of popular e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento to make it even easier to manage your online store.
Everything from sourcing and procurement to sending and receiving, Booqable can help you get better insight into your inventory, enabling you to make smarter decisions.
Synder
Having accurate and precise inventory will provide you with peace of mind and a plan of action for upcoming seasons. Synder software will fetch correct inventory data from the platforms you are using into your books, so you will never run out of stock.
This software imports the data from the sales platforms and assigns the correct product to sales, which makes sure your inventory in the accounting software is accurate and up to date. With Synder, you have more freedom to customize your bookkeeping based on the if-then conditions.
You can also track and categorize your product inventory, locations, shipping, and discounts to have more accurate reports.
Odoo inventory management
Odoo is open-source software that primarily focuses on small business needs but allows for tailoring to any size on demand. So, it is highly customizable. Until you start using it with other products of the company, it will cost you nothing (the trial period is provided).
The module for inventory control is designed to help you keep track of your stock levels in real-time. It allows you to create an unlimited number of different products with their own inventory planning.
The app allows you to add third party integrations from their app store, in case you need a ready for use solution. In the meantime, Odoo provides its client with a bunch of integrated solutions, which help to unfold the whole digital infrastructure for the business: from marketing to inventory planning.
Ordoro
It’s hard to practice good inventory management techniques when you’re juggling multiple sales channels. Fortunately, Ordoro makes multichannel selling easier. With Ordoro, you can create master products within your inventory system, allowing you to update descriptions, images, branding, and more across all (or some of) your sales channels at your discretion.
Ordoro also offers vendor management features that make dropshipping a breeze. For instance, you can assign vendors to specific products in your catalogue. Then, anytime a customer orders those items, Ordoro can automatically send the order to the appropriate vendor, thereby cutting out the middleman (you), maximizing supply chain efficiency and ensuring your customers get their items as quickly as possible.
We also like that Ordoro makes nontraditional inventory management strategy possible. For instance, you can opt to strategically oversell your goods or limit the number of instock items visible to your customers—both of which create the illusion of scarcity and motivate your potential buyers to complete their purchase. Ultimately, this helps you turn a better profit and avoid storing expensive excess inventory.
Zoho Inventory
Zoho Inventory has a lot to offer. For starters, Zoho offers a pretty comprehensive free plan that allows customers to accept backorders on out-of-stock items, arrange dropshipping, and handle multi-currency transactions. That gives small businesses a chance to keep their inventory organized without worrying about their limited budgets.
If you opt to upgrade your plan, though, you get enhanced features. You can manage multiple warehouses, enjoy serial number tracking and batch tracking, and sync multiple Shopify stores to your account.
Ultimately, though, we think Zoho works best for small and medium businesses only. Although its plans do offer a range of order limits—including the newly announced Elite plan (for $239 per month, billed annually), which offers unlimited orders—it’s the other features that help Zoho cater to a small- and medium-business clientele. With the elite plan, there are no limits on orders, shipping labels, or tracking. With 5 Shopify stores and 15 warehouses, it’s a great plan for medium businesses doing a lot of shipping and ecommerce.
If you’re a small business that doesn’t need to fulfill thousands of orders per month, Zoho Inventory is a very effective and inexpensive option. And you can stick with Zoho when you’re ready to expand too.
Cin7
Most enterprise resource planning (or ERP) platforms feature modules for every aspect of your business (like accounting, point of sale, inventory, and shipping)—and they charge you for each module you add to your plan. Those costs add up, making ERP systems outlandishly expensive for all but the largest companies.
Cin7 breaks the mold by offering built-in modules that come standard with your plan. In addition to a fully integrated POS system, Cin7 comes fully loaded with B2B ecommerce features, manufacturing features, and even a payment portal. And that’s all in addition to the barcode scanning, inventory tracking, and order fulfillment features you’d expect from your inventory solution.
Cin7 also offers advanced demand forecasting and multichannel support, including cross-channel syncing every five minutes. This ensures you have a dynamic inventory system that stays up to date, helping you achieve proper inventory management with minimal effort.
The downside? While Cin7 isn’t as expensive as most ERP solutions, it is among the more expensive platforms on our list (starting at $299.00 per month).
Upserve
Upserve provides a dynamic inventory solution for the unique needs of restaurants. Specifically, Upserve offers a greater focus on expiration date tracking and specialty supply chain needs (like refrigerated shipping) than other inventory control software options.
Yes, Upserve is a bit pricey, but it provides everything you could need in one service. You can run your online ordering, POS services, and workforce management—even across multiple locations. Upserve even provides insights and tools that make it easier to run your restaurant.
What’s more, Upserve provides features just for restaurants. For instance, you can use Upserve inventory software to create recipes for the dishes you sell, customizing each recipe with the precise ingredients and amounts needed. Then, when you sell that dish, Upserve can automatically deduct those quantities from your inventory levels for the ingredients used. You can even use this feature to determine pricing for your menu items and identify food waste.
We also like that Upserve comes with a built-in point-of-sale (POS) system—though admittedly, we don’t love that you’re restricted to using (and paying for) Upserve’s unique proprietary POS hardware. Still, if you’re running a restaurant, Upserve is probably the best inventory management software you could hope for.
inFlow Inventory
For businesses on a budget, inFlow Inventory is a great inventory management system. inFlow offers, in our opinion, the best free inventory management service on the market (inFlow On Premise). Or you can enjoy more features with inFlow’s paid plans—some of the cheapest available, starting at a low $89.00 per month.
Also, inFlow is remarkably easy to use, with many of its inventory tracking features automated. It’s even got a great mobile app that facilitates barcode scanning and keeps your sales agents and inventory manager on the same page for stock inventory levels.
One thing to keep in mind, though? inFlow Inventory is cheap because it’s more scaled back than other platforms on our list. While it makes managing inventory a breeze, inFlow caps the number of orders you can process monthly before you’re charged extra. For example, the most expensive plan includes 10,000 sales orders per month.
Orderhive
- Free plan for Shopify users
- Workflow automations
- Centralized inventory across multiple channels
- 20/6 support by chat, phone, and email
- Poorly rated mobile app; Android only
- Problems with some integrations
Orderhive Pricing
All plans include one user, unlimited SKUs, and integrations
- Lite: $49.99/month, includes email and chat onboarding support
- Starter: $149.99/month, includes personal support, automation
- Growth: $299.99/month, includes premium integrations, four hours of employee training
- 15-day free trial
- Free plan for Shopify users
If you run an ecommerce or have a dropshipping business and find Ordoro too expensive for your needs, look at Orderhive. This highly affordable system is built for ecommerce and has strong inventory and multiwarehouse features. It integrates with the highest number of third-party applications compared with all other providers on our list and has excellent returns management—an important feature for ecommerce.
Orderhive cloud inventory earned a respectable 4.49 on our rubric. It tied with InFlow for inventory tools—although InFlow has a greater breadth of tools, while Orderhive’s are more ecommerce-focused. It earned top marks for expert score and shared the top spot with Zoho for pricing. Only it and Zoho have free plans as well. Because of its focus, it’s not good for retailers like Zoho, and specialty shops like repair or rentals should consider Orderry or EZRentOut.
| Standout Features | Free plan for Shopify users; serialize inventory; manage variants to bundles |
| Works for | Ecommerce and dropshipping |
| Ease of Use | Intuitive interface, 20/6 technical support, onboarding assistance ($99), knowledgebase |
| Tracking | Track serial, batch, or expiry dates, FIFO inventory rules |
| Purchase Orders | Low stock alerts, assign multiple suppliers to one product, automated PO creation |
| Barcoding | Generate and print barcodes |
| Sales Channels | Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, eBay, Magento, BigCommerce |
| Integrations | 19 marketing automations, eight shopping carts, 60+ shipping services, three payment processors, four POS systems, 10 CRM platforms |
| Advanced Features | Automate ecommerce tasks for order creation, inventory, purchase orders, dropshipping; split ordering, fraud order handling |
| Customer Reviews | Customers are pleased with the price and ease of use but say that it can be buggy and some integrations (like Magento) do not work |
Conclusion:
If you run a small business, you’re likely wondering about the best inventory management software for small business. It’s a good question, because choosing a great software for inventory management that suits your needs and budget can be challenging. With so many choices out there, and new apps being created every single day, it’s hard to figure out the solution that will work best for your company.