Tracking Inventory both online & in store sales

[dudemcgregor]

Hey All,

I'm building a site that helps stores sell retail online. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to keep a proper inventory count for these stores on my site.

Is there anyway to simultaneously track in store sales and online sales at the same time. For example, if a store sells something in their actual store, how can I update the inventory total on my site? Thanks!

[Steve R Jones]

Sharing the same database would help... How are they currently updating you when they sell something?

[dudemcgregor]

Thanks for your replay Steve. I guess that exactly what I'm trying to find out. What is the best way for them to update me?

I was thinking each merchant could have their own back-end to the site and update it, but I don't feel its practical that a Merchant would update it after each sale.

I was also wondering if there was a way for their inventory system/software to send a status report a few times a day. Maybe in a CSV format, and then i could update it that way.

Still trying to find a simple, practical way to do this.

[Steve R Jones]

"IF" your clients have a decent inventory system/software system in place, it could in theory broadcast, based on limits, when sales are made...And or place an order with you.

Do you have an agreement that every time they sell an item that they want you to send a replacement?

[dudemcgregor]

Well right now we are building the website / putting together a business model. So we don't have clients yet. I'd like to figure out the inventory details before we take on clients.

Essentially the site shows the user where he/she can go get the products at a store near them. So, I need to figure out a way to have the precise inventory because if a product is sold out at the store, we don't want it to appear on our site until it the store receives additional inventory.

It would be great if the inventory could be auto updated every "x" hours.

[Approachnet]

I've done this before in the past and the business would not allow me to connect directly to their database for security reasons. What we did is have a duplicate database on the online store server and we created a script that would upload a new database from the business server every 15 minutes to the online site server. It worked very well and we used ASP.NET. Good luck.

[andrewclay]

Previously i have little bit doubt regarding this but after reading this post, it's cleared. thanks for sharing this.

[Kyle689425]

Thanks for sharing.

[Solid Commerce]

Without knowing TOO much about the size of your selling operation -- this might help.

Solid Commerce can integrate with QuickBooks POS and help you out with two-way inventory sync that way. It's also designed to automate the rest of your operation (order fulfillment, shipping, vendor management, customer management, etc)...all while keeping your inventory up-to-date across as many channels as you'd like.

Take a look: http://solidcommerce.com/solutions/

You're more than welcome to PM me to talk a bit further, or you can call me at 800.750.7617.

Hope this helps!

_ Sean

[connectedbus]

Take a look at http://www.connectedsale.com/

That solution allows you to run POS and eCommerce off of one system. Sean, it also has Solid Commerce integration out of the box as well!

You can see it in action at - http://vimeo.com/78802070

Hope that helps

Gary

[Solid Commerce]

Hey, nice! We're big fans of ConnectedBusiness here at Solid Commerce. Great to hear from you, Gary!

[Philip Lindsey]

Hi,
There are not many software platforms that does integration of both online and offline channels of sale. Some of the very few ones are Brightpearl, Primaseller and I think Channel Advisor also does this.

These platforms will help you view both your online and offline inventory from a single panel. This means you don't need to have multiple logins for each.

What these platforms do is, they sync all your online as well as offline inventory, so that whenever you make a sale offline, the particular stock gets deducted from your actual inventory and this leads to automatic deduction of stock from your online store inventory too. It makes the whole process much more simpler and saves a huge amount of your time.

Its important that you consider the features as well as price of the platform you want to choose and that will depend on the type your business.

[bruce10]

Make your telecom inventory easy to manage and control then you can rely on Kansoly for the satisfactory results.

[NickFalls44]

Some really good info here

[jcage]

I also recommend you to use some ERP software for your business, it is very helpful and handy, I have to say. Good luck with it, I think you will find my reply helpful to you