NZ inventory system, 2 man company

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kingdragonfly

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#280360 10-Dec-2020 13:43

I'm trying to help a small 2 man business.

They sell a lot of inventory
10,000 customers
4,000 product lines
10,000 products

Their existing accounting system is year DOS based running under Windows XP, using a database engine that's no longer made.

The existing software has a sorted history. Current system was "Cowan Bowman and Associates" CBA, which was "Platinum" in New Zealand. In the last 20 years, the company's been bought and sold a number of times and is now "PlatSoft" in South Africa.

I told them their first step was to contact the South African company, but given the age of the software and technology it was doubtful to get it updated. It was also a very expensive piece of software (and flakey) when new, so I'd expect a very expensive upgrade / migration process.

I recommended hiring temporary data entry clerks to add their existing customers and products into a new web-based system.

Anyone have any recommendations for a web based inventory system?

Cheers

xpd

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#2619452 10-Dec-2020 13:56

How do they sell items ? Online ?

If so, something like Wordpress with WooCommerce would prob work.

Would take time to input everything, but is clean and works.

XPD / Gavin

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kingdragonfly

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#2619472 10-Dec-2020 14:10

They have a pretty limited web-site to sell stuff, perhaps 1% of the products.

Most of it is old-fashioned brick-and-mortar, and direct phone calls from collectors.

chevrolux

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#2619477 10-Dec-2020 14:12

I would think Xero with an add-on.

Probably not the cheapest per month, but its going to be well supported for a long time.

mattwnz

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#2619480 10-Dec-2020 14:17

How come they have only got 2 staff for that number of customers and products? I have worked with a company setting up Shopify and they are using Vend so all cloud based, and you can useVend with Xero https://www.vendhq.com/nz/xero-pos

mattwnz

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#2619481 10-Dec-2020 14:18

chevrolux:

I would think Xero with an add-on.

Probably not the cheapest per month, but its going to be well supported for a long time.

Just a cost of running a business that size. Xero look like they are doing really well at the moment. I think they are now one of , if not the biggest company in NZ, yet they get hardly any coverage of their success in NZ from the media. The media seem to think success is buying and selling houses and watching them go up in price...sigh.

Dynamic

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#2619520 10-Dec-2020 15:26

If they would like to look at a product with better integrations with suppliers, have a look at Cin7. Their strength is EDI with suppliers to make supply chain issues go away.

Happens to have a local development hub. We helped them with a couple of internal projects when they were smaller.

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chevrolux

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#2619521 10-Dec-2020 15:32

mattwnz:

chevrolux:

I would think Xero with an add-on.

Probably not the cheapest per month, but its going to be well supported for a long time.

Just a cost of running a business that size. Xero look like they are doing really well at the moment. I think they are now one of , if not the biggest company in NZ, yet they get hardly any coverage of their success in NZ from the media. The media seem to think success is buying and selling houses and watching them go up in price...sigh.

Yea even though it's only two staff, if they're dealing with that many different products I would suggest the inventory is absolutely integral to the business, if not, the single most important thing. Cost shouldn't really be the deciding choice here.

The higher-end add-on's are still only a $2-300/month for low user counts. Seems pretty insignificant, when you're dealing with 40-50,000 stock items.

kingdragonfly

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#2619523 10-Dec-2020 15:45

They sell (mostly) collectibles. I've never helped a company like this, but I'd guess when they have a lot of mostly inexpensive stock but little inventory turn-over.

Collectors know what they want, and have very specific requests.

mattwnz

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#2619561 10-Dec-2020 17:31

Dynamic:

If they would like to look at a product with better integrations with suppliers, have a look at Cin7. Their strength is EDI with suppliers to make supply chain issues go away.

Happens to have a local development hub. We helped them with a couple of internal projects when they were smaller.

My client looked at them, but decided to go with Vend because I think they found it more shop focused. It may depend on the type of business and how it operates.

ANglEAUT

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#2619672 10-Dec-2020 20:56

kingdragonfly: ... I recommended hiring temporary data entry clerks to add their existing customers and products into a new web-based system.

Anyone have any recommendations for a web based inventory system? ...

You can also try Christchurch based QTech. Steve Champ supported us with their QPos system. It runs locally on the PC, seems very fast & keyboard friendly.

Please keep this GZ community vibrant by contributing in a constructive & respectful manner.

BlakJak

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#2621031 13-Dec-2020 20:52

kingdragonfly: The existing software has a sorted history.

This makes me twitch. I suspect you were thinking of "sordid".

No signature to see here, move along...

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kingdragonfly

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#2621152 14-Dec-2020 07:17

Always misspelled it. Cheers

lxsw20

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#2621168 14-Dec-2020 08:33

kingdragonfly:

I recommended hiring temporary data entry clerks to add their existing customers and products into a new web-based system.

Surely thats the absolute last option. Can this existing DB not be exported in to anything that could be useful?

Philatelic

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#2629751 3-Jan-2021 16:27

Thanks for all your suggestions. Firstly, the language is Dataflex.

We have had the system since 1984 and it's worked fine until now, where just the inventory/sales analysis won't accept the 2020 date for rolling over to the new month and printing the sales info.

The invoicing and debtors ledger works fine, so we can generate invoices and at months end, statements.

The program is fantastic for us and does eveything we want - it seems a simple fix to correct the date and make that part of it work.

We back it up these days on a memory stick - the entire info is slightly less than 400 Mgb.

All those addresses and product lines, plus sale records going back 10 years, it's great to work with.

When we bought it, they had 10,000 sites in Australasia.

I'm hoping there's some one who can help.