Stock management software: The savior of small businesses

A small grocery in North-East Delhi, Agarwal Store has been going under renovation. The owner, Manish Gupta, is unaffected by the disordered grocery stock spread on the floor. His impassive and nonchalant behavior is due the ease a stock management software has provided him.

Manish has his stock barcoded in his system and can efficiently track them and put them back at their place after the renovation. This is one of the reasons why a small business should invest in such digital solutions.    

Why small businesses need stock management software?

Apart from tracking items, this software shortens and simplifies all the functions carried out manually by a small business. Hence, tagging prices with Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates included, creating a bill, and analyzing the business takes barely any effort. These can be done with a finger-snap on a computer, that too with accuracy.

In case you have a large percentage of your stock running close to expiry, with the software, you can suggest and sell the near-expiry products over the regular batch.

Nowadays, these software use a mechanism called collaborative commerce, where buyers and sellers using the same stock management software are able to trigger a task on each other’s software when one of them completes a process. For example, when a buyer generates a purchase bill, the seller with receive a sale bill of the transaction automatically.

The difference: stock and inventory  

Stock management software for small businesses are slightly different from regular inventory software. An inventory comprises of finished products and the raw material used to make them. It also includes the machinery and the entire system used to make the products. Stock, on the other hand, is a word that attributes finished goods sold by a business.

Inventory incorporates all the business assets used to produce the business goods and determines the sale price of the goods according to those assets. The stock decides the amount of revenue generated by a business. More stock that means higher revenues.

Don’t download them illegally!

There are a lot of such tools available in the market. In India, business owners usually download freeware small business inventory software that are limited in features. Else, they download complex and bigger software solutions illegally, which makes businessmen liable for jail time.

These small businesses need to understand that it is imperative for them to invest in a solution that is uninhibited in any aspect. Tools like Marg ERP, Tally, and Zoho Inventory provide a myriad of ways you can customize and manage your stock. They provide after-sales support, which you won’t receive with a freeware or a torrented version.  

Choose the right one!

It’s important to choose the right software, one that ticks all the prerequisites on your checklist. Small businesses have a limited budget, which is why they need to balance the immediate needs with the ones with less priority. If they need CRM integration, they should try Zoho Inventory, and if they require collaborative commerce, Marg ERP should be their choice.

Above all, entrepreneurships need determination and innovation to grow. Without them, operating and understanding these stock management software for small businesses will be difficult.