@vaunte wrote:I'm looking for a time-saver! Can anyone give any suggestions for Inventory Management solutions with these needs in mind:
- Create listings that pushes out to various marketplaces
- Manage quantities on multi channel marketplaces
- Reporting (COGS/Sales)
- Time saver/ease of use in creating listings
- Reliability, of course
- Optional: sync orders and print shipping labels, with the commercial plus pricing.
- Optional: Use of Quickbooks Pro (desktop not online)
I've been using what is now SixBit since '99 - it's a LOT better now. 🙂 Based on your list above:
- SB does eBay, Amazon, and etsy directly. To use all three, you will be using the top-of-the-line version, so price needs to be considered. However, price is fixed regardless of level of use...100 listings or 100,000 are the same monthly fee.
- I've also used SB to create the import CSV files for other not-directly-supported venues. Once you lay out the Map (what data to export, column by column), SB has a nice export-to-CSV (and other formats) process - makes building alternate venue files a breeze. You do have to track that inventory 'manually' (IE: keep a folder for Posted-to-eBid, Posted-to-Bonanza, etc), and you can either manually enter the sales or just process them on the alternate venue and adjust the Item inventory count in SB.
- SB has something called Allocation Plans, which allow you to do interesting things and to balance inventory across the supported venues. You'd have to be Enterprise level or above (Small Biz doesn't support AllocPlans), but if you're selling the three venues, you'd be Enterprise level anyway.
- Tracking costs is built-in. SB captures each listing's fees and tracks them. When the Sale record is created, the fees are pulled across so you can more accurately determine profit. Reporting based on Item, Listing, or Sales data is also built-in, and at Enterprise level, that feature is wide open.
- Quick listings are a breeze. SB uses both Item Templates (prestored Item records with as many or as few fields preset as you want) and Snippets. Snippets are little bits of stuff you want to be able to add to a specific listing quickly, without having to retype everything. I use snippets to add a bit of 'canned keyword-rich text' to elongates from 50+ different locations. Universal Studios, almost a dozen for all the Disney parks/hotels/resorts/etc, M&M's World, and especially for the larger tourist sites, like LegoLand, any theme park, big zoos, popular museums...you get the idea.
-Reliability comes from the SQL database that underpins everything, and from the experience of the developers. The core group have been together since '97, many also thru 'the eBay years'. They are a good team and take good care of their customers. And the software is amazingly stable -- my problems are most often self-inflicted, so I've learned to create a backup, try something, and if it doesn't work - recover from the backup. Worked when I was developing software, works as a software user too!
-Added bonus: if your Internet connection goes flakey, or eBay is 'unavailable', you can still create new Items (inventory records) and schedule listings to post later (free using SB's internal scheduler).
-SB will pull sales from the supported venues and print packslips (several formats available, and can be modified). I created a custom packslip for one customer with a 'cut-off top' -- it contains just the addressing data a carrier would need if the external label were damaged/unreadable. Works for them!
-SB does have a shipping label interface, but I don't use it at home and at work we use ShipWorks. SB will pick up the shipped status, and tracking numbers, from the venue once the order(s) have been shipped. Even has a sweet Track function where it will pull up your browser and show you the tracking data for the defined carrier and tracking number on any given order. Sweet!
-There's a Notes field (two, actually) on every Sales record. I use the Order Notes to keep track of any conversation with a customer. The intention is that anyone could access SB, look up the order (by any of a dozen fields), and by reading the Notes they would know what's been going on and where I'm heading the conversation. I also use Order Notes to track when UPI cases are opened, and closed. The Shipment Notes are more for tracking things related to a single shipment (which could be just one item or a group of items in one box). Adding another shipment, or splitting a customer order across multiple shipments (boxes) is also easy. I don't use it for multi-box orders...that's a bit more detail than I want right now. 🙂
The Quickbooks Pro - not so sure. Could probably set up an export file that could be imported into QBPro, but there is no built-in interface as yet. They do offer a Consignment Module, if you do that type of selling (I did, but handle my customer sales differently).
SixBit has a rather extensive user guide/manual/helpfiles online on their site, and a few of the discussion forums are open to all, not restricted to just customers. There are a lot of folks doing a lot of interesting things. I don't do SQL (my coding pre-dates SQL), but there are a few folks that seem to have a process to do just about anything. 🙂
Good Luck! PM me if you have any specific questions - I always answer when I can.
-Bob.
