Best Stock Control program ?

[MailOrderCo]

Hi guys

Anyone have any good suggestions for a program that you canenter all your stock into on the pc ? then when a customer rings up you can check your stock levels on the phone, and if there is no stock see who the supplier is so you can contact the supplier for a delivery date while your customer is on hold.

Any suggestions welcome, If it can also hold customer data that would be a huge bonus as an all in one program.



Thanks in advance

[Widgey]

If you wanted a free version, isn't this something you could set up yourself in Access? or if you have it filemaker?

[MailOrderCo]

Giving it a whirl with Filemaker :-)

Also found online stores such as Cubecart.com that run on your own server on your domain, you can use the customer account function to add telephone/mail order customers and also monitor all your stock from it to, as well as using it for web orders.

Not sure how easy the later would be, but looks a good optino to keep eveyrtihng in one place (along with backing it up daily elsewhere)

I'm actually doing just that for a client at the minute, They will be using Cubecart for cash sales / trade accounts, stock control and web sales. They were previously using a bespoke system they had had created but it's failed them too many times so hopefully this one should prove to work much better .

[Widgey]

Isn't that very restrictive though?

If I am right doesn't cubecart only work if you have internet connection? eg. you have to connect to your cubecart online.

What happens if you net goes down? not only are your orders online suffering (possibly) but also you cannot process manual orders via telephone because you cannot connect to your shop.

Is it not best to have a standalone system in place to prevent the possibility of this?

[moneyman]

i would look for something with a bit of predictive technology in it. ie you input the lead times and number of items per order and it flags up if you are about to go short based on average sales. there are a couple on tucows for peanuts.