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USPS delays, caused by COVID-19 and service changes, are impacting small businesses.

The effects of these delays are seen in transportation, customer satisfaction and financial transactions.

While businesses can’t control the holdup, there are different ways of working around the problem.

This article is for small businesses challenged by the ongoing USPS delays.

Over the past few years, changes from the top down at the United States Postal Service (USPS), coupled with ongoing issues surrounding COVID-19, have caused the U.S. mail system to experience a slowdown in the processing and delivery of mail. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan, announced in 2023, implements money-saving changes, such as slowing mail delivery that will affect the services of the USPS dramatically. In addition, ongoing COVID-19 impacts still limit transportation availability, according to the USPS.

Besides being a major annoyance for most people, it has caused severe problems for many sectors of the economy and small businesses have been hit especially hard. Although there are private sector competitors, such as FedEx and UPS, the USPS is still a crucial service.

How are USPS delays affecting small businesses?

The USPS has long been vital to the operation of small businesses and the postal service has only become more important with the increasing popularity of online shopping. This makes service changes or slowdowns difficult for small businesses.

Some help is offered with the Postal Service Reform Act of 2023, a new $50 billion relief plan for USPS passed by Congress last year. Part of the deal requires the USPS to deliver mail six days a week, except in rare weather exceptions such as natural disasters.

Despite this legislation, mail-delivery delays still exist. Here is how small businesses are being affected.

Alternative delivery services are more expensive.

The USPS delivers a staggering number of packages, letters and other parcels — approximately 425.3 million individual pieces per day, according to the USPS. As deliveries get delayed and expected delivery dates become murky, small business owners like chúng tôi owner Yungi Chu, have had to deal with slower deliveries.

“Slow USPS service has been causing havoc to our online mail order business,” he said. Although he could use another shipping service, like UPS or FedEx, to alleviate the problem, the difference in cost between those services and the USPS is too wide for them to be a feasible answer to the problem.

“The same three-day service [with either FedEx or UPS] would cost two to three times more, so it’s a lose-lose situation right now,” Chu said. “Either we pay more through UPS or FedEx or we gamble with the slow service.”

Let’s take a shipping comparison website, chúng tôi and compare a package traveling from New York City to Los Angeles. For a package that’s 10 x 10 x 10 weighing 10 pounds, using a general average, typically USPS is still the cheapest option (a seven-day delivery time is $9.03) while the ground option for UPS for a four-day turnaround (or FedEx for five days) is $27.04.

Did You Know?

On a global scale, the USPS has suspended international services to various countries. This might cause your business further headache, forcing you to use a different service.

What’s causing the USPS delays?

There are two main reasons for the USPS delays. First, the postal service is strained by the increased shipping volume resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, recent changes implemented by USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy have resulted in slowdowns.

Because of COVID-19 closures many Americans shifted to purchasing products online while staying at home and the country has experienced a shift in how it conducts business. Increased online sales have led to a higher demand for the USPS’s delivery services, resulting in some deliveries taking longer than expected.

Along with the logistical troubles that come from an unanticipated surge in packages, the coronavirus itself had an impact on the USPS’s workforce. According to a Government Executive, approximately 55,600 USPS employees had tested positive for COVID-19 among its workforce back in July 2023. The number of COVID-19-related deaths among postal workers has not been widely reported by the government, but it is estimated that at least 197 workers have died from the disease, according to ProPublica.

The other major reason for these slowdowns is a series of changes, implemented by DeJoy’s 10-year plan. Changes being made included adding a minimum of a day to First Class delivery times, a shifting focus from air delivery to ground delivery, increasing domestic rates, limiting overtime and reducing post office hours. These changes, plus more, are meant to major financial issues facing the postal service.

Congress also passed the bipartisan-supported relief plan for USPS in 2023 to help offset the losses suffered by the organization, with a crucial piece of it undoing 2006 legislation that required the USPS to prefund retiree health benefits of all of its present and past employees for 75 years — a more than $120 billion commitment.

How small businesses can adapt to USPS delays

As the federal government continues to wrestle with these delays, small businesses are looking for ways to ensure faster deliveries to customers, who are still reluctant to shop in brick-and-mortar stores because of COVID-19 risks.

Although some business owners, such as Chu, said they’re sticking with the USPS, others are switching to other shipping services, like FedEx and UPS.

“In the past, we had always given people options for shipping, but due to issues over the past couple of months with COVID, we instantly upgrade them to express shipping so that the customer receives their package on time,” said Jeff Moriarty, marketing manager at Moriarty’s Gem Art. “People are still used to receiving packages quickly due to companies like Amazon, so to stay competitive, we need to do what we can to make the customer happier than ever and receiving their package fast helps a ton.”

He’s also looking ahead to prevent delays during the holiday season. “We will be completely removing the first-class option and only giving the option for express shipping, which we will be offering for free,” Moriarty said. “This will be the only way we can guarantee the customer receives their package in a timely manner.”

Key Takeaway

In a new post-COVID-19 shopping world, it’s important to prepare for any special occasions. Here are some helpful ways to prepare for holiday sales.

Companies that rely on prompt payments are shifting to online services, such as Square, PayPal and Venmo. David D. Schein, president and general counsel at Claremont Management Group, said one way he’s dealt with the delays has been to move most of his business transactions online.

In the past six months, two of his checks, both over $1,000, did not arrive at their destinations. “One was returned two months later, with a bogus explanation,” Schein said. “The other check has never surfaced or been cashed. I replaced one payment with Zelle and the other with Venmo.”

The shift to a more cashless society offers businesses lots of options for accepting online payments, including PayPal. [Read related: 5 Important Things to Know Before Accepting Online Credit Cards]

How your small business can work around USPS delays

How your small business deals with USPS delays will not have a simple solution. COVID-19 delays, though frustrating, are becoming less of an obstacle since the development of vaccines and with new variants seeming less fatal. Delays from the USPS itself, specifically the 10-year plan, is a different story. The changes in policy, pricing and services is not something that is likely to reverse course.

What your small business can do is be diligent and proactive when it comes to deliveries. The USPS provides service alerts, which allow you to get an idea of what might delay your package, giving you time to adjust. Being flexible and adaptable is a key component to surviving with an ever-changing world around you.

Additional reporting by Andrew Martins.

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How Tech Can Boost Your Small Businesses

Technology can help to increase collaboration between your employees, as well as boosting your business effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

For example, it is likely that as a small business you may not yet have centralised office space and some employees may work from home. Having the right collaboration tools in place such as Slack, Zoom and others can help you keep track of employees’ activities and schedule team meetings.

You might also want to consider marketing solutions which go beyond basic email. It’s important to have a website, as customers expect this and it allows them to see what you offer and potentially even purchase your services or goods.

Overall, there are a number of benefits technology can bring, and it might even mean there’s less work to do.

The tech tools you need for your business

It can often be difficult to get your head around everything that needs to be done when starting a business. These are some of the best methods to kick-start growth for your small business.

Website builders

Solutions such as GoDaddy and 1&1 IONOS are good for building your website.

GoDaddy starts at £6.99 a month for the web builder, with a one-month free trial. 1&1 IONOS offers six months free, and then it costs £9 a month thereafter.

A good website builder will include guided help on building a website from scratch. You can find out more about the best website builders here.

Social media

Just like having a website, social media is equally as important when it comes to building an online presence and promoting your business.

One of the best places to start is

Facebook for Business goes into more detail about how this works.

Accounting software

You might find handling finances challenging, and maybe you don’t have the budget to employ an accountant. There are software solutions such as Sighted and Sage Business Cloud Accounting that help with the basics of account management such as invoicing, payment tracking and so on.

Sage Business Cloud Accounting pricing starts at £6 a month, with a 30-day free trial.

You can find out more about the best accounting software for small businesses here.

Collaboration tools

Adopting collaboration tools can help to build seamless interaction between employees. It is a good way to minimise the use of email, get faster responses and share files quickly and easily across one platform.

For many businesses, email can often be seen as a non-urgent form of communication and also something that can use up a lot of time. Adopting a collaboration tool such as Slack can help to change that and also speed up responses.

Slack is free to use, but the premium package offers more storage space for keeping more message history. This starts at $6.67 (£5.25) a month per user.

You might also want to consider Whatsapp for Business and Microsoft Teams.

Google’s

Evernote is a good option for sharing files and photos starting at £10.99 / $7.99 a month, per user. This is a good platform for small businesses on a budget as it also includes some free services.

There are also some other apps for small business owners you might want to check out.

How technology can automate processes

Automation is another option to consider. From automatic replies to enquiries to automated payment tracking and contactless payments it is all designed to make your working days easier.

Some platforms to consider are GoCardless, for automated payment and invoice processing, and IBM Watson AI for automated customer assistance. GoCardless is available for free.

4 Smart Ways For Frugal Small Businesses To Use Online Marketing

4 Smart ways for frugal small businesses to use online marketing

Competing against larger competitors in your niche or sector is difficult at the best of times. It’s not always a level playing field either. When the bigger competitor with greater revenue enjoys a more substantial marketing budget, it’s tougher for a small business like yours to compete.

Here are four smart ways that small businesses on a tighter budget can use digital marketing for continued growth:

1. Use social media to dominate your niche

Social media is a confusing landscape for SMEs. Most small businesses only have a few members of staff or just a solopreneur at the helm. Taking the founder or one of the critical members of staff away from their regular duties to handle the social media accounts is often a losing strategy. Also, it’s difficult to justify employing a full-time social media manager because of the cost and a lack of belief that their salary package (plus benefits) will deliver an ROI for the business through increased sales.

For SMEs, the best idea with social media is to hire a social media agency to handle their accounts. A dedicated agency has the required skill set and is far better able to keep abreast of the changes in the social media landscape. The agency can agree on a price plan based on the number of accounts handled and the posting frequency to match the SME’s available budget.

2. Invest heavily in email marketing

While technology features such as web browser notifications and mobile apps have proven useful for internet users, nothing has replaced or surpassed the power of email. Small companies shy away from building a mailing list because they worry about what type of content they can produce and how they’ll organize it. The content marketing tends to be their stumbling block and that’s even for businesses that already publish a company blog.

Email marketing, with the opt-in from site visitors who supply their email address and agree to repeated emails (per new EU GDPR regulations), is one way to ensure a prosperous future. Subscribers can be emailed about new blog posts, price discounts, new product launches and helpful industry information that makes the brand look good. For businesses selling high-priced products that need repeat visits before a visitor makes a buying decision, capturing their email address is vital.

3. Use photographic imagery to inspire

The web is increasingly a visual medium. With photos shared on Pinterest and Instagram, and videos on YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook, content marketing with a visual component encourages more people to visit your website and follow your social media accounts.

Look at all the images used on your website and social media accounts. The headers on social accounts could surely do with an update. Find a way to inject some life and personality into them even if you’re an SME selling small home improvement tools.

4. Gain visibility through industry guest posting

Most SME’s don’t really understand the concept behind guest posting. It seems like a lot of work for little gain, but this is actually not the case. When you find a website that focuses on the same or similar target market as your own with a suitable demographic mix, then there’s bound to be some likely customers there. The idea is to go where your potential customers are, publish a post, and grab their attention!

Small businesses must always focus on their marketing budget. Making sensible choices about which campaigns are the most affordable and deliver the highest ROI should be top of their priority list. Doing so maximizes available resources and offers the greatest potential to boost growth.

Customer Experience Audit – Find The Issues That Are Hurting Your Conversions

You have holes in your funnel to fill – here is how you can fix them

The metaphor I like best in this context is the leaky bucket. The bucket represents your sales funnel, and the holes represent visitors ‘leaking out’ before they should. The implication for your e-commerce business: you need to fill these holes, starting with the larger ones, as fast and as permanently as possible.

But how can you find out where your holes are, and how big they are? Fortunately, you can discover this in a straightforward and cost-effective way by using just three tactics from my ‘customer experience (CX) audit’ toolkit.

Transform your marketing strategy with the RACE Framework

The RACE Framework is our simple 5-step marketing planning structure for marketers and managers looking to apply a data-driven approach to marketing decision-making. Build an omnichannel marketing strategy that performs at every level of your marketing funnel, through plan – reach – act – convert – engage, with the RACE Framework.

If you’re looking for a marketing strategy to reach and acquire more customers, why not book a free consultation to kick off your strategic planning? Identify your problems, and discuss solutions that work for your business.

Need a winning marketing strategy?

Book your free 1-2-1 consultation to develop your new strategy with the RACE Framework

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What’s a customer experience audit?

A Customer Experience (CX) audit is a comprehensive assessment of your target customers’ interactions with – and perceptions of – your brand. In general, it considers all of the key ‘touchpoints’ during your customer’s shopping journey, from finding and choosing your brand or product, to interactions after the sale. A digital CX audit is a bit more limited, and typically includes:

Google analytics review

Website conversion review

Customer interviews

Emails review

Secret shopping review

Social media review

Abandoned cart review

One or more visitor polls

Unboxing experience

Product return experience

Do some customer interviews

The first task I recommend that you do in your expedited CX audit is to speak with customers. Yes, I realize you don’t have time to speak with hundreds, or even dozens, of your current prospects and customers. The good news is, you don’t need to. If you have a customer support team you have a nexus point for customer inquiries, complaints and requests, just the kinds of things you need to know as you seek to improve your user and, more broadly, customer experience.

After only working for your company for two to four months your customer support agents will have heard:

The most-asked questions

The most-voice concerns

A whole lot of complaints

They may have even heard some compliments and suggestions. But those are less important to consider, at least initially. To plug those funnel holes you first need to understand the most frequent questions and concerns – the emotion-based reasons your visitors are bailing out, and may never feel like returning.

Follow these steps to get input from your support agents:

Ask your Support Supervisor’s permission to speak with a few agents. When she asks why you need this access, tell her that the support team knows the most common questions asked and issues you need to address, and by discovering these questions you can proactively answer them through design updates. This will result in fewer support calls, giving agents more time to answer revenue-oriented sales calls.

Schedule time with 3-4 of the agents. Ask for both interview time (45 minutes per agent) and observation time (a minimum of 90 minutes per agent). Ask to speak with both phone and chat agents. Assure the supervisor that you won’t interrupt the agents during their calls. Important: Start scheduling these sessions as soon as possible, as setting these appointments typically requires a 2-3 week lead time.

Ask each agent to share the top questions asked and concerns voiced. After sitting them them individually, observe them while they’re taking calls. Probe to learn about the mindset of the customers they speak with. Have the attitude of a curious apprentice. And ask follow-up questions to ensure that you’re understanding the root cause of the issues.

You don’t need to audio record any of your conversations; just take good notes on the key questions and issues you hear. If your company has a chat app installed, ask to see the chat logs from the past couple months. If possible, filter the calls and chat to ‘sales only’ contacts, since it’s these early-phase issues you’ll first want to fix with your design updates.

Estimated time investment: 8-10 hours

Estimated tools investment: 0

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How far your visitors are scrolling

Visitor session recordings

How well your forms are performing

Conversion funnel data

You can also run a one-question poll on your site if you have a key questions to answer (for example, based on something that surfaced during your support agent interviews).

Estimated time investment: 2-3 hours

Estimated tools investment: US $270 (3-month tool subscription; moderate-traffic site)

(Shhh!) Do some secret shopping

Secret shopping – aka ‘eating your own cooking’ – is the kind of secret you don’t have to keep. While you may do it covertly, secret shopping will bring customer experience issues to the brightest light, because you will witness them yourself.

A caveat: doing this shopping may leave a ‘bitter taste’ in your mouth. But it’s better you know the issues now so you can fix them before your site leaks more revenues.

Here how to do secret shopping:

Identify the primary ‘target’ customer for your website. If you’ve created user personas or profiles for your website or brand, now’s the time to use them (and get some more return on that research and analysis investment).

Consciously ‘wear the persona’s mask’ as you interact with your company. Assume the same demographics, mindset and motivations of this person as you do you secret shopping. I realize this can be tricky to do, but do your best.

Start interacting with your brand at the beginning. If your persona would typically do a Google search, do that. Find your brand’s listing in the organic or paid results, and continue from there on to your website. Ask questions you have in mind via chat (if it’s available) and via phone. Keep logs of your discussions.

Note all of the ‘glitches’ in your experience versus what would be more ideal (what would get you to your desired product faster, and in a more satisfied emotional state).

Actually buy one or more of your products. Use a ‘test’ credit card account if possible. Otherwise return the product(s) to get a refund (another interesting process to witness).

Open the box to assess the clarity of the packaging and instructions (including the receipt, who to contact with questions, and how to submit a return).

Touch as many parts of your brand experience you can within a reasonable time (I usually allocate a minimum of 4 hours to this task). Include these aspects of your experience:

Shopping process:

Sales website. Note what on the sales website is unclear or unconvincing (doesn’t persuade you to continue). Note whether the site has a ‘human touch’ to support your shopping.

Online chat. If your website has chat, note:

Typical response time (try a few chats, at different times of day)

How helpful the chat agents are (Are they knowledgeable, responsive, friendly?)

Purchase experience:

Add something to your cart, and start checking out, but stop it after you enter your email address. Leave the site before you buy the item. Note things like:

Within 30 minutes did you get a ‘cart recovery’ email?

Does the site show you ‘wait, don’t leave!’ message when you start to close your browser?

Do you receive any other communications?

Return to the site, then complete your purchase. Notice the issues you encounter from cart through checkout and order confirmation. Answer questions such as:

Do you know who to call with sales-related questions?

Is it clear when your order is complete?

Do you know when you will receive your items?

Post-purchase experience:

Did the company offer to connect with you on social media?

Do you know who to call if you have order-related questions?

How will you get updates on your order’s shipping status?

Note how well the site does – and, more importantly, does not – answer the questions that arise, questions that, if left unanswered, would likely make you, or a real potential customer, bail out.

Estimated time investment: 4-6 hours

Estimated tools investment: 0

Analyze what you’ve discovered

Why More Businesses Are Unfriending Facebook

In space, they say, no one can hear you scream. Some marketers feel the same way about Facebook.

The social network has come to play a vital role for many of the million-plus businesses that promote their brands and connect with customers on its site. But it’s clear that some marketers no longer see Facebook as their friend.

Eat24’s recent post was the latest sign that some companies are frustrated by Facebooks’s algorithm.

A recent post on the site by Eat24, a food delivery service, was the latest sign of marketers’ discontent. The problem, Eat24 and others say, is that Facebook’s algorithms that determine which posts appear in users’ News Feed are unpredictable, and they’re increasingly weighted towards those who pay to promote their posts.

“We give you text posts, delicious food photos, coupons, restaurant recommendations … and what do you do in return? You take them and you hide them from all our friends,” Eat24 said in a “breakup letter” to Facebook.

“It makes us think all you care about is money,” Eat24 wrote, and promptly deleted its account from Facebook.

Pay to connect?

But it has to do so in a way that won’t alienate people by making them feel bombarded by marketing. And it needs to strike the right balance with what most people join the site for in the first place—to connect with their family and friends.

One of the main vehicles for companies to promote their products and services is Facebook Pages. For free, they can set up a page and try to get people to visit it, often by generating likes.

Some see it as a bait-and-switch tactic. It’s like selling a billboard under the premise that a certain number of people will see it, and then parking a bus in front of it, said Jessica Canty, owner of Jake’s Coffee and Espresso in Staunton, Illinois.

Just not getting results

“Facebook is not nearly as useful as it used to be,” she said.

“That’s asinine,” she said. If Mamabargains already has 145,000 followers, she wants to know, why should it pay all that money for its posts to be seen by potentially less people? Despite the strong following, she said, an average post today is seen by only 3,000 people.

Kurtz said she fields a constant stream of complaints from followers who don’t understand why they no longer see Mamabargains’ posts in their News Feeds. “I could hire someone just to handle our customer service complaints related to Facebook,” she said.

Changing algorithms aren’t helping either

Trying to adapt her posts to Facebook’s constantly changing algorithms is also frustrating, Kurtz said. Sometimes adding a link provides more visibility, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes posts with photos work better, but sometimes not.

The company’s sales have fallen by half in the past year, Kurtz said, and she holds the changes to Facebook’s algorithms largely responsible.

Even if paying to promote a post generates more likes for a page, that might not help in the long run, said Josh Reiss, a photographer based in Los Angeles who uses Facebook to promote his work.

With so much content jostling to appear in people’s News Feeds, having a lot of followers doesn’t assure posts will be seen, he said. “So what if it gives you a few more fans? You still have to pay to promote future posts. You still fall back into obscurity.”

Figures support the idea that the “organic reach” of marketers’ posts—the visibility they achieve without paying for it—is falling. Social@Ogilvy, a marketing consultancy, analyzed more than 100 brand pages and found that organic reach hovered at 6 percent in February, down from nearly 50 percent in October. For large brands with more than 500,000 likes on their pages, organic reach in February was just 2 percent.

“Organic reach of the content brands publish in Facebook is destined to hit zero,” the group predicted. “It’s only a matter of time.”

This leaves Facebook in a quandary. There’s only so many posts it can show to users in a day, and it can’t bombard them with marketing messages or they’ll feel they’re getting spammed. At the same time, it needs to show people the content they want to see, and in many cases that’s not posts by marketers.

Brandon McCormick, director of communications at Facebook, said as much in a response to the post from Eat24.

“There is some serious stuff happening in the world and one of my best friends just had a baby and another one just took the best photo of his homemade cupcakes and what we have come to realize is people care about those things more than sushi porn,” he wrote, referring to Eat24’s food pictures.

Facebook: Yes, business posts are declining

But he acknowledged that the reach of posts by businesses, unless they’re paying to promote them, is declining. Marketers on the site can try to increase their visibility by creating more engaging content that will generate activity, like posts from people’s friends do, he said.

Some of those tools appear more suited to larger businesses, however, and it’s not clear they’ll help to ease the frustration some marketers are feeling.

Some are already spending some of their marketing dollars elsewhere. Jake’s Coffee and Espresso has started paying $35 a month to use Perka, a mobile loyalty platform, which sends messages to customers each morning.

Photographer Josh Reiss is looking at alternative ways to reach people. “I’m exploring more ways to connect with customers directly,” he said.

“Brands are not going to abandon Facebook, but they will focus a larger portion of their marketing efforts elsewhere, for both organic and paid content,” said Nate Elliott, a Forrester analyst who helps companies develop digital marketing strategies.

Part of the issue is that, much like Google with its search engine, marketers can’t see inside Facebook’s algorithms. They can adapt their content to try to get greater visibility, but ultimately they’re subject to the whims of what Facebook decides. And when those decisions result in poor visibility for their brands, they’re likely to feel they’ve been cheated.

“Marketers feel tricked,” Elliott said.

Updated on April 11 with a video report IDG News Service.

8 Best Inventory Management Software For Businesses

8 Best Inventory Management Software for Businesses

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Tracking the inventory of your business might be necessary in order to scale up your sales, so a powerful tool is really helpful.

In case you’re a business owner and handle a lot of data about products or stocks, inventory software can be the proper solution.

Assuming you strongly need effective inventory solution, this is the right place to be and choose from our documented list.

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Download Fortect and install it on your PC.

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Inventory software is designed to help small and large businesses to keep track of and update products as they go along the supply chain.

Some of the features of inventory software include automatic ordering, tracking of sales and purchase orders, categorizing of products, and electronic scanning, among many others.

The key functions of inventory software that drive business operations are updating inventory in real-time, eliminating manual systems of managing inventory, plus synchronizing the inventory in case you have multiple channels or stores.

How can inventory software help my business?

Other benefits include automated processes that save time and money, plus you get to avoid running out of stocks hence happy customers.

However, different business types require different features in inventory software, though a small business may in the future need more features as it scales up its operations.

We checked out the best inventory software tools you can use for simplified, organized, and accurate business operations, and here are our top 7 picks.

What is the best inventory software for Windows PCs?

Katana MRP is the ultimate manufacturing ERP software and it’s here to provide you with full transparency over the dynamics of your inventory, sales, and beyond.

This solution helps you track and optimize all the inventory movements and then allows you to prioritize your sales orders and set up reorder points.

By acknowledging your inventory in real-time, you can automate product allocation and raw material to fulfill the orders quickly.

To minimize the storage costs, Katana tracks the demand and adjusts the production schedule for maximum efficiency.

With this tool, you can create, set up, and remove shop floor operators. It also measures the real vs. actual materials used in production to cut costs and time.

Katana supports integration with many e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce to ensure constant stock even if the demand fluctuates.

Best of all, this complex solution handles both made-to-order and made-to-stock workflows for sales order fulfillment at the same time.

That way, your e-commerce and B2B operations are perfectly centralized for total visibility and clarity within your business.

Don’t take our word for it because you can test the trial version of the software for 14 days and figure out if it’s the best tool for your needs.

Take a look at Katana MRP’s key features:

Get total inventory control for finished products and raw materials

Automate inventory transactions and set reorder points to prevent stock-outs

Track on-hand, committed, and expected stock amounts in real-time

Manage product variants and materials in one place

Monitor your inventory across multiple warehouses

Katana MRP

Get the best tool to track all the moving parts of your business: inventory, sales, and a lot more!

Free trial Visit website

This inventory software is available for use with multiple currencies, and in multiple languages including English, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Arabic, but you can translate it to another language yourself.

Features include product cost tracking, customizable reports, control over user logins, CSV, and import/export for existing products.

The tool also handles customers and/or vendors, and has a multi-user mode so everyone works in real-time with the same data on one network.

Then, you may export reports and documents to PDF/Excel, and set up an automatic backup for your database.

Your data is securely hosted online so you can manage your business from any location or device.

You will benefit from the following key features:

Product cost tracking

Customizable reports and control over user logins

CSV and import/export for existing products

Export reports and documents to PDF/Excel

Automatic database backup

Inflow Inventory

Go one step further with your product inventory tracking, and grow sales using this full-rounded software.

Free trial Visit website

Whether you’re running a small or home business, a franchise network, or you sell consumer goods, this inventory software gives a unique combination of technology and usability so you can efficiently track and manage your inventory.

Its name may imply a huge software with a complex operating system, but it is a cloud solution meaning you have limitless boundaries with this software.

Being cloud-based, Megaventory has a minimal setup with no need for extra equipment, so you can scale up or down as necessary. It is also easy to use with an intuitive design and fast access across multiple devices.

It easily integrates with third-party apps such as Magento for accurate e-commerce, Lokad for demand forecasting, and Zapier for versatility in connecting with more than 300 web apps.

You can get the 15-day trial, after which you can opt in and choose one of the plans.

Let’s see some of its best features:

Inventory management across multiple locations

Order fulfillment

Manufacturing management, and in-depth control

Customizable to multiple languages

Order fulfillment

Megaventory

By choosing this software you make a sustainable investment for the future. Try out Megaventory!

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This inventory software lets you view and control inventory across your sales channels easily as it is cloud-based, thus eliminating costly setup and maintenance fees while streamlining your IT systems and reallocating resources to satisfy our customers.

Expert tip:

Whether yours is a single retail store, multiple warehouses, drop-ship, or outsourcing businesses, you can use Brightpearl to centralize inventory control and maintain accurate stock levels and value.

It is also easy to migrate from an existing enterprise resource planning system, or a new one, to Brightpearl through simple steps you will be guided through by the professional services team.

Check out its best features below:

Integration with popular e-commerce platforms and sales channels

Bulk allocation and reallocation of orders

Low inventory reporting

Real-time synchronization across sales channels

Barcode scanner integration

⇒ Get Brightpearl

Good inventory software is designed to manage and control the functions of an inventory-centric business with tools for trend analysis, accurate forecasting on items needed and when they’re needed, thus increasing predictability and helping balance stock and service levels with the least investment.

This award-winning inventory software integrates the best-of-breed apps in an easy-to-use interface, with decades of knowledge intersecting with forward-thinking software development.

At its core lies inventory control with features such as a product screen for real-time access to all inventory aspects from one place, unlimited unit definitions, visibility on inventory to maximize resources with greater flexibility, multiple units of measure, warehouse management, and barcoding inventory for 99% accuracy.

It is easy to implement and use; it handles any business growth and delivers a quick ROI.

⇒ Get Acctivate

This easy-to-use yet powerful inventory software is made for manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors who need efficient processes.

If you want an easy-to-use, affordable, inventory software that will satisfy your inventory and sales reporting needs, Unleashed is your best bet.

Its features include the perpetual inventory control that reflects all inventory costs so you get an accurate view of margins and profit, stock visibility in real time so you can see stock levels and tracking information with the Stock Enquiry feature, plus flexible reporting to create stock counts and report filters for suppliers, product groups, warehouses, and others.

You can also keep track of stock across multiple warehouses in different locations, segregate stock for reporting, manage your entire product catalog, and set min/max inventory levels.

⇒ Get Unleashed

EZ Office is the leading web-based inventory software that classifies its inventory management or control into five groups: Asset Management, User Management, Service and Maintenance, Reports & Notifications, and Integrations.

Asset management lets you track your assets and access asset information from any device, place, or time you wish. Features include asset lifecycle management, asset stock, and inventory module, checkout and check-in assets, and an availability calendar to see your assets in real time filtered by time, group, or location.

You can also plan ahead with the reservations module, track purchase orders, monitor regular checkpoints in your asset lifecycle, put labels on assets for easy scanning and GPS location with barcode or QR code support, import/export excel sheets, track and manage depreciation.

Other features such as user management, helps you allocate user roles to staff with restricted access or admin roles.

The Services and Maintenance feature lets you put items automatically into service upon check-in, create scheduling tickets, track maintenance events, plan recurring cycles to repeat for regular service, among other maintenance processes.

EZ Office also delivers custom reports and alerts for specific events, data backups, and scheduled reports, which you can also easily export as a PFF or CSV file, or load on Dropbox for easier sharing.

It easily integrates with Zendesk, Dropbox, Centrify, and Salesforce, among other apps.

⇒ Get EZ Office Inventory

Dear is a well-priced, cloud-based, and simple to use inventory software that integrates with other apps, plus is able to create multiple variations with one SKU or product family.

Features include seamless e-commerce integration, tracking of manufacturing costs, smart purchasing with its intuitive features that save time and effort while giving you purchasing insights, sales functionality from order tracking to split orders and drop shipment options, inventory management, and accounting to give you real-time insights and reports into expenditure and profitability.

It comes with a free 14-day trial after which you can opt in and get the full-featured version.

⇒ Get Dear Systems

We conclude here our list of the best inventory management software for your business and we hope you found the right one for your needs.

Getting the right tool to keep up with your supply and demand is a crucial step for your business so you should assess all the possibilities.

You should also look at our list including the best weekly planner software to bet your business organized even more.

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