Inventory programs computer

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. To provide a free option, inventory platforms often have to scale back their offerings and impose limitations on the number of orders, products, shipments, and integrations available. That being said, there are many open-source inventory platforms. But as of right now, none of the open-source options on the market stack up to the subscription-based platforms available.

It keeps your system up-to-date and tracks every detail for every product. Running a perpetual inventory system narrows down your options for free inventory management software considerably. In fact, the only cloud-based option on our list is Zoho. But inFlow also offers a great, simple inventory app, free of charge with an inFlow plan. Check out our complete list of recommended inventory apps to learn more. We combed through dozens of inventory management brands to find the best ones that are free and offer distinct features for business owners.

Each brand was ranked based on its performance in four categories: price, features, integrations, and ease of use. The rankings are subject to change based on updated features or pricing.

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For more information, please see our Privacy Policy Page. We may earn money when you click on our links. Learn More. Top 7 Free Inventory Management Systems for Maintaining order with pen-and-paper is a dying process prone to error, and purchasing inventory management software to shoulder the burden is expensive.

If only there were a cheap way to manage inventory — enter free inventory management software. We understand your doubts. The world of inventory management is an expensive one. Businesses spare no expense to develop an efficient and accurate method to store, pick and ship their goods. However, these expenditures are worth it. Firstly, and most obviously, free inventory tracking software is, well, free.

This lack of expenditure immediately removes any expense-related barriers involved in adopting the system, and in the same vein, quickly boosts the ROI associated with implementing this new software. If you are coming from an analog operation, simply switching to a digital system comes with numerous benefits. Reducing manual data entry, integrating forecasting tools and leveraging automation features can breathe life into a floundering business. Not only that, but customers who you could have lost to shipping errors or a lack of demand planning can be brought back into the fold and turned into return clients.

Before we jump into the top platforms, covering the must-have features of a successful management system one of the critical factors you need to consider. Being free certainly is attractive, but without these key features, the cheap system you have your eye on may not cover all your bases. Our analyst team dug through the inventory management market and discovered these top features to be sure and look for:.

Keeping track of a product as it travels from warehouse to shipping is vital. Whether this involves using RFID technology, barcode scanners or real-time stock views, a successful system will keep you updated on where a product is, when it needs to move and how to store it at maximum warehousing efficiency. Many businesses have to transfer stock between warehouses and other locations regularly. A successful management solution should make product movement simple while also providing in-depth information about each move.

Included within this feature is the ability to bundle products together, also known as kitting. Creating and sending purchase orders by hand feels similar to Dark Ages torture.

Your cheap inventory management system should allow you to create single or bulk POs online and email them directly to your suppliers.

Some solutions can automatically generate POs as certain item levels drop within the warehouse. While you may think shipping belongs in the world of transportation management , your inventory system actually plays a starring role in getting products shipped out correctly. The best systems allow for multi-carrier and multi-modal shipment strategies. You want the most options available as possible to ensure your customers receive their goods on time.

Many systems can automatically generate critical shipping documentation and labels to attach to packages or store for later use as backups. Any system worth its salt should give you support for order management, from creating the order to fulfillment of the product. Other helpful features of order management let you develop custom pricing guides, send quotes to customers, mark committed stock and send invoices.

Analytics and reporting are the lifeblood of any growing business. These tools give you real-time access to demand information, on-hand stock, total sales, tax information and more. Features like these provide managers and stakeholders up-to-date information to back up their decision-making processes. Analytics can also point out areas of your operation that are suffering or inefficient, giving you the tools required to step in before more significant problems arise.

The modern workforce is becoming more and more reliant on mobility as time goes on. Being able to unchain ourselves from our desks while still having the ability to interact with our inventory management software is becoming vital today.

Through the dashboard, you can monitor recent configuration changes and see newly added or removed hardware. This enables you to monitor changes in your environment. There are also software inventory reports that detail current infrastructure updates, admins who installed the updates, resources used, unused hardware, and more. The platform also comes with application infrastructure dependency mapping that enables you to see a visual display of application dependencies and issues throughout your environment.

It is available on Windows. You can download a free day trial. Atera is a cloud-based platform that includes a package of tools for the remote monitoring and management of client systems. An inventory of equipment on Each client site lies at the heart of this monitoring service and so it helps your technicians to keep track of the computer inventory on each site.

The computer inventory services of Atera can be enhanced by an add-on service that performs automated network mapping , keeping track of the connections between all computers and network devices. As Atera is a cloud-based service, its console can be accessed through any standard browser and it is even possible to group together technicians located at several sites or from their homes. The system is offered in three plans that all also include team and business management tools.

There are integrations available for Atera that enable the system to interact with third-party tools, expanding your system monitoring toolset. You can assess Atera with a free trial. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is a configuration management tool that can automatically discover and import network devices for your monitoring environment. You can view serial numbers, IP addresses, manufacturer, model, end-of-life dates, end-of-support dates, and more from one location.

Users can schedule regular scans to detect devices to ensure they always have the most up-to-date device information. A network topology map allows the user to view a topological perspective of devices throughout the network, providing complete visibility over crucial systems.

You can also manage the configurations of connected devices and schedule backups, and execute scripts. The software alerts you whenever formats change on a device, or there is a problem. This helps you to keep an eye on changes to configurations so you can keep your environment secure. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is ideal for enterprises that want a complete solution for managing their network inventory and network configurations.

Available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can start a free day trial. ManageEngine AssetExplorer is an asset inventory management tool with network autodiscovery that can automatically scan your network and discover devices. ManageEngine AssetExplorer breaks down discovered assets and categorizes them as IT assets, non-IT assets, asset components, software, and groups. You can also use grouping so that newly discovered resources are automatically placed into a particular group.

The software includes a configuration management database that lets you track assets, software installations, and documents in one place. You can also view a relationship map of configuration items and view dependencies. There is also a report feature you can use to create and schedule reports on the status of your environment.

ManageEngine AssetExplorer is a solid computer inventory management solution for enterprises looking to manage device configurations. It is available on Linux. Free version available that supports up to 25 nodes. To find out pricing for this product, you need to contact the company directly to request a quote. You can start the day free trial from this link here. JIRA Service Management is an asset management solution that can discover devices throughout your network and add them to a central repository.

Discovered systems automatically have their status updated. You can view them through the dashboard, highlighting information such as the Serial Number, Owner, Status, Model, Location, and Warranty expiration date of assets. The platform also includes a range of configuration management features. For instance, it can automatically add items to a configuration management database and detect configuration changes. It can also display dependencies between configuration items or assets and services.

JIRA Service Management provides users with alerts that notify them about the device regarding incident response capabilities.