When it comes to selling on Amazon, there’s one thing that can make or break you: your inventory (or more specifically, how you manage that inventory.)
Whether dealing with fluctuating order volumes, fulfillment issues or just stocking the right amounts of product, a good inventory management strategy is key to helping you do it.
It can also help you better meet demand, ensure customer satisfaction and, subsequently, improve your Amazon ratings and account health — all things that mean more business in the long run.
“Effective inventory management is more important than ever, especially if you’re an Amazon seller. In the past year, Amazon has introduced monthly long term storage fees for slow moving inventory, increased FBA fees, and launched the new Inventory Performance Index (IPI) metric.”
“There have also been improvements to the basic inventory management features available in Seller Central. What these changes have in common is a mission to help Amazon merchants manage their inventory more effectively.’
“Simply put, Amazon can’t afford to be a long-term substitute for your warehouse, garage, basement, attic, or another storage facility.”
– Becky Trowbridge, Managing Content Editor at eComEngine
You can read Becky’s entire guest post here.
Best Amazon Inventory Management Tools
Are you struggling with managing your inventory properly?
Do you keep running out early or having trouble fulfilling orders properly?
Here are the best Amazon inventory management tools that can help.
1. Brightpearl
Brightpearl offers services to manage inventory, orders, customers and finances in a single system. Brightpearl also helps sellers gain the efficiency and insight needed to accelerate growth and profits through retail accounting, multichannel retailing (on and offline), and of course – order management software.
They offer integration with 3rd party systems to make your retail business even more powerful including ebay, Amazon.com, & Shopify.
2. RestockPro
RestockPro is a cloud-based inventory management tool designed to help Amazon sellers save time when tracking inventory and shipments. Whether you’re an FBA seller or manually fulfilling orders from your own warehouse, RestockPro can accelerate your Amazon business.
You can track all inventory data, forecast sales, streamline operations, manage suppliers, print custom stickers, create kits and much more
3. Forecastly
Forecastly is an FBA inventory replenishment tool focused on Supply Chain Efficiency, Prevention of Stockouts. They use hard data to determine when to buy more inventory and how much to buy.
Want to learn more? Check out our Q&A with Jeremy Biron, Founder at Forecastly.
4. Skubana
Skubana is an inventory and order management platform that unifies your sales channels, warehouses, and fulfillment ops. With native integrations into Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and more, Skubana enables brands and retailers to grow beyond their primary storefront and compete in a multichannel, multiwarehouse world.
Founded in 2015, Skubana is designed to help retailers, brands, and marketplace sellers boost their margins, bottom line, and multichannel presence. Skubana’s customers include some of the fastest-growing D2C brands and marketplace sellers including Tushy, Haus Labs, Snowe, Caraway, Nomad Goods, and LastObject.
5. Joelister
JoeLister is the easiest, fastest way to list and fulfill your Amazon inventory on eBay. They offer:
List in One Click – Automatically populates your eBay listings with images, descriptions, and product info.
Quality Sync – Keeps your item quantities in sync between Amazon and eBay.
Automatic Fulfillment – When your items sell on eBay and the payment is received, Joe automatically passes the order to Amazon for shipping. Joe also uploads tracking numbers to eBay.
6. Neatoscan
The Neatoscan service utilizes a barcode scanner, PDA (Portable Data Assistant) and earpiece to allow sellers to determine a products selling price on eBay or Amazon and they also offer inventory management tools.
7. Sellbrite
Sellbrite is one of the easiest ways for brands and retailers to list and sell their products on the world’s largest online marketplaces. With a simple, intuitive interface, Sellbrite provides powerful tools and automation to simplify listing, prevent overselling, and optimize fulfillment.
8. SellerActive
SellerActive is a multi-channel listing management platform that efficiently maximizes your e-commerce product reach across marketplace giants such as Amazon, eBay, and Walmart.
With SellerActive, you can:
- Easily build a centralized product catalog, bulk upload new listings to multiple channels, and quickly resolve marketplace-specific issues
- Use automated repricing technology to set dynamic pricing rules that capture the Buy Box an average of 72% of the time
- Consolidate orders for easy packing, shipping and tracking
- Use accurate reports and helpful alerts to gain real-time visibility into your listings, sales and orders… without the fear of overselling or out-of-stocks.
Backed with live support from our team of e-commerce experts, SellerActive can help you automate tasks, optimize your online presence, and expand your business.
9. Stitchlabs
Seamlessly sync inventory, orders, & data across all your retail & wholesale channels & warehouses for profitable, & scalable operations.
According to Stitchlabs, “To meet the demands of connected customers, you must have the right inventory in the right place at the right time—and be able to quickly deliver it. Your ability to effectively manage your inventory—as well as plan for and respond to changing demand—can make or break your business.”
Stitchlabs offers Omnichannel Inventory Control, Multichannel Selling,Order Management, Reporting & Analytics, Purchase Orders & Operations.
10. TradeGecko
TradeGecko provides a powerful cloud-based commerce platform for SMBs, serving B2B wholesalers, distributors and eCommerce businesses, enabling them to:
- Manage the entire supply chain ecosystem via a complete, multi-channel inventory & order management platform
- Seamlessly integrate with leading eCommerce platforms, marketplaces, accounting solutions, warehouse management and fulfillment systems in real-time
- Make wholesale highly personalized and digital through a proprietary B2B eCommerce store
TradeGecko offers Inventory & Order Management, B2B eCommerce, Multi-Channel Sales, Operations & Integrations, Reporting & Analytics and a Mobile App.
11. Ecomdash
Ecomdash is designed with multi-channel sellers in mind, so if Amazon isn’t your bread and butter — or your products are spread across locations and platforms, this might be the tool for you.
On the inventory side, it gives you real-time visibility into stock levels across all channels and integrates with dozens of platforms, including eBay, Woo Commerce, Walmart, Magento and even Etsy.
It also helps you manage orders across all channels, consolidating your orders, pick-and-pack lists, shipping labels and more, and helping you better manage third-party fulfillment. Ecomdash runs $60 to $650 per month.
Final Takeaway on Inventory Management:
Manage by Stats, Appath and Inventory Lab are also popular options. Most of these (as well as those listed above) offer free trials — often for a full month at a time. Be sure to schedule a demo, check out customer reviews and take the tool for a spin before committing to a pricy monthly or annual fee.
You want to make sure the product integrates with your channels and software easily, and that it offers you the insights you need and an easy to understand, actionable way.
Typically, Amazon sellers are so focused on finding new products to sell on Amazon that they often forget about maximizing the profitability of their existing product set. It is easier to boost your company’s profit through proper inventory management than it is to do the same through new product sourcing.
Effective inventory management (especially across multiple channels) will ensure you don’t run out of products to sell when customers are looking to buy and your cash is properly invested in the right products so you can keep turning inventory over for a profit.