Are you looking to improve the inventory management of your WooCommerce store? Managing stock effectively is a cornerstone of successful eCommerce, yet it remains one of the most challenging aspects for many store owners.
Having a streamlined, efficient, and reliable inventory management system is like having a healthy heart; it keeps your business alive and kicking, reducing the chances of stockouts and overstocks, ensuring customer satisfaction, and ultimately driving growth.
Yet, without the proper tools and processes in place, inventory management can seem like an insurmountable task. Imagine trying to solve a giant jigsaw puzzle with thousands of unique pieces without a guide or a clear image of the completed puzzle.
That’s what inventory management can feel like without the right tools – chaotic, frustrating, and time-consuming.
Thankfully, there’s a solution to this complex problem. By using WooCommerce inventory management tools, you can transform this daunting task into a manageable, streamlined process.
In this guide, we will delve into the world of WooCommerce inventory management, explore the importance of a well-implemented inventory system, outline key features you should look for in management tools, and demonstrate how using solutions can save you valuable time, reduce stock discrepancies, and enhance your store’s overall efficiency.
Benefits of using a plugin for inventory management on WooCommerce
Effective inventory management is crucial for the success of any online store. It plays a vital role in ensuring customer satisfaction, cost control, cash flow management, avoiding understocking and overstocking, efficiency, forecasting and planning, and gaining a competitive advantage.
To underline this point, consider this: inventory distortion, which includes overstock, stockouts, and shrinkage, amounted to a staggering global total of 1.77 trillion in 2023, according to a research paper by IHL Group. That’s a figure too substantial to ignore, underscoring the vital importance of precise inventory management for any online store.
While WooCommerce comes with a built-in inventory management functionality that is free, beginner-friendly, and allows some level of flexibility, adding plugins can elevate your inventory planning operations significantly. Some benefits of using a plugin for inventory management on WooCommerce include:
1. Enhanced inventory visibility and control
While WooCommerce provides basic stock management capabilities, using plugins can enhance overall control with features like automated stock updates and real-time accuracy. This not only minimizes human errors but also ensures demand for popular products is met, preventing lost sales from inventory distortions. Plugins also offer advanced dashboard views, giving store owners a more granular view of stock trends and levels across different product categories and store locations. This allows for immediate business decisions regarding adjustments in their inventory.
2. Efficient supplier management
Some inventory management plugins offer automation of various supplier management tasks such as tracking shipments, purchase orders, and managing supplier information in a centralized system. This helps streamline communication and operations with suppliers, reducing errors and saving time, which also has a positive impact on supplier relationship management. Additionally, some plugins can also assess supplier performance by tracking delivery times and product quality, enabling better supply chain decisions.
3. Predictive analytics and data-driven decision-making
WooCommerce offers basic reporting features, but plugins take this further by providing customized reports and predictive analytics. These tools can track advanced metrics such as inventory turnover rates, profit margins, customer demand, and future sales trends, offering insights that are pivotal for strategic and proactive inventory planning backed by real-time data.
4. Seamless returns management
Inventory management plugins have features that can simplify the management of product returns. They help automate the returns process, including stock level updates and initiating refunds or exchanges. This ensures that returned items are quickly reprocessed, facilitating accuracy in inventory data at all times and minimizing sales losses. Data from returns (e.g., the cause of return) can also be analyzed to improve product quality and align the inventory with customer preferences.
The Best Point of Sale
for WooCommerce
Your products, customers, orders & inventory automatically synced, always ready for you to sell your products anywhere!
Essential features of inventory management plugins on WooCommerce
WooCommerce, the most popular eCommerce plugin on WordPress, offers native functionality for managing inventory, stock levels, orders, and shipping. While these features form the foundation for good inventory management, they could also be limiting.
It’s a good idea to utilize plugins for inventory management to unlock more advanced capabilities. Some ideal features to look for in Woocommerce inventory management plugins are:
- Live inventory tracking: Provides real-time updates on stock levels, allowing for instant visibility into inventory status across all channels for inventory planning and customer inquiries.
- Automated reordering system: This system automatically triggers purchase orders to suppliers for items that fall below predefined thresholds, ensuring continuous product availability and uninterrupted sales.
- Barcode inventory scanning: Allows for quick product lookups, updates to inventory levels, and faster order fulfillment, significantly reducing the chance of human error in stock management through manual data entry.
- Demand forecasting: Analyzes past sales trends to forecast future demand, aiding in precise inventory planning and reducing the risk of overstocking or stockouts.
- Cross-platform sales channel integration: It keeps inventory levels consistent across multiple sales platforms, including online marketplaces, social media platforms, and physical stores, ensuring a unified stock information flow.
- Customizable alert system: It offers tailored notifications for various inventory situations, from low stock to product expiration, enabling timely decision-making and inventory adjustments.
Top inventory management plugins for WooCommerce
1. Jovvie
One plugin that has gained recognition for its seamless integration and comprehensive suite of features is Jovvie.
This plugin equips store owners with the ability to manage every facet of their online stores – from sales and orders to inventory – through an in-store Point of Sale (POS) front-end management system.
Key inventory management features
- Dynamic live inventory: The standout feature of Jovvie is its dynamic live inventory synchronization, which ensures real-time consistency between your WooCommerce store’s inventory and your physical store. Jovvie checks with WooCommerce at various key stages to ensure that an item won’t be oversold by customers shopping simultaneously in person and online.
- Barcode scanning: With Jovvie, you can leverage the power of technology to streamline your inventory management. Using a tablet or mobile device, you can scan barcodes to update inventory levels automatically, eliminating manual errors and saving precious time.
- Support for complex products: Jovvie supports a wide array of product types, including product add-ons and customizable products. This feature gives you the flexibility to manage your inventory irrespective of the complexity or uniqueness of your product offerings.
If you’re managing both a physical and an online WooCommerce store, Jovvie is an absolute must-have solution. Its ability to bridge the gap between online and in-person shopping through real-time inventory synchronization offers a unified shopping experience for your customers and a consolidated management system for you.
Pricing
Jovvie is competitively priced at $39 per month, providing a high-value solution for businesses seeking to optimize their inventory management process.
Jovvie stands out as a robust and user-friendly WooCommerce plugin that brings efficiency and precision to your inventory management. It’s a worthy investment for WooCommerce store owners, especially those operating in an omnichannel retail environment.
2. Katana
Katana is another renowned plugin in the realm of WooCommerce inventory management.
This end-to-end inventory management solution can synchronize seamlessly with your WooCommerce store(s), providing a comprehensive and integrated approach to handling your stock.
Key inventory management features
- Barcode inventory management: Katana supports barcode inventory management, enabling you to track your stock levels with ease and accuracy, reducing the possibility of human error, and streamlining your stocktaking processes.
- Real-time stock level insights: With Katana, you can always keep your finger on the pulse of your inventory status. It provides an overview of live stock levels, ensuring you have real-time insights into your available stock, sold items, and products that need replenishing.
- Automatic reordering: The plugin allows you to set automatic reorder points for each product. When a product’s stock level falls below the set point, the system automatically generates a purchase order, ensuring you never run out of best-selling items.
- Cost analysis and product pricing: Katana excels in providing insights not just into stock levels but also into your product costs. It can calculate the manufacturing cost for each product, helping you accurately price your products and maintain a healthy profit margin.
Pricing
Katana’s pricing starts from $99 per month, making it a viable investment for businesses that require an advanced and integrated inventory management solution.
3. Veeqo
Veeqo’s standout feature is its capacity to track inventory across multiple sales channels, marketplaces, and warehouse locations, making it a powerful tool for those managing large online stores across diverse platforms.
Key inventory management features
- Multi-channel sync: Veeqo can synchronize inventory across multiple channels. This means your stock levels are always up-to-date, whether you sell on your WooCommerce store or on other marketplaces.
- Mobile picking app: To enhance warehouse efficiency, Veeqo offers a free mobile picking app. This simplifies the process of locating and picking items in your warehouse, leading to faster order fulfillment and improved customer satisfaction.
- Analytics and forecasting: The plugin provides you with a set of powerful analytics and forecasting tools. With these insights, you can make more informed decisions about your inventory, helping you avoid overstocking or understocking situations.
- Shipping tools: In addition to inventory management, Veeqo also offers a suite of shipping tools. This allows you to handle inventory and shipping all in one place, simplifying your workflow and increasing productivity.
- Integrations: The ability to integrate with other eCommerce platforms like eBay, Shopify, and Amazon makes Veeqo a versatile solution for managing inventory across multiple channels. It ensures that your inventory data remains consistent and accurate across all platforms.
Pricing
Veeqo is completely free, which makes it a highly attractive solution for store owners who want powerful inventory management capabilities without a substantial financial investment.
4. ATUM
ATUM is a robust inventory management plugin designed to enhance WooCommerce’s native inventory functionality.
It offers an array of features via a user-friendly dashboard, allowing you to efficiently control and monitor various aspects of your stock.
Key inventory management features
- Customizable dashboard: ATUM’s customizable dashboard gives you a comprehensive overview of your stock situation at a glance, offering insights into your inventory’s status and behavior.
- Inventory editing: It offers a user-friendly interface that allows you to quickly edit essential aspects of your inventory. This includes suppliers, SKUs, locations, weight, and prices. This streamlined process enhances your control over your stock management.
- Inventory monitoring: In addition to basic stock tracking features, ATUM also provides advanced options to help you monitor your inventory with increased precision.
- Timely sales updates: The plugin provides weekly and fortnightly sales and lost sales indicators, which can be a crucial tool for forecasting and inventory replenishment planning.
- Stock level indicator: It also includes an inventory level indicator that gives you a clear view of your stock situation.
Pricing
ATUM is completely free, making it a good, budget-friendly option for businesses of all sizes that want to benefit from enhanced inventory management.
5. WooCommerce Attribute Stock
WooCommerce Attribute Stock is a dynamic inventory management plugin designed to handle stock based on global product attributes.
This is especially beneficial if your store contains a variety of custom products, as it allows you to manage stock levels flexibly and efficiently.
Key inventory management features
- Automatic stock creation: WooCommerce Attribute Stock can create and control stock based on product characteristics such as size, color, style, or any other custom attribute, offering a highly personalized approach to inventory management.
- Stock limit set-up: You can set limits on your product stock. This gives you greater control over your inventory, helping you to manage supply and demand more effectively. This feature allows you to designate the amount of stock reduced per purchase, even allowing for decimal values. This functionality brings an extra level of precision to your stock management.
- Admin center: The plugin includes an easy-to-use admin page for effortless management of attribute stock items.
- Performance reports: Keep track of your stock performance with the help of stock reports, providing you with valuable insights to enhance your inventory strategy.
Pricing
WooCommerce Attribute Stock is priced from $39 a month. The package comes with a live demo, allowing you to take it for a test drive before committing. This allows you to see firsthand how the plugin could benefit your store, making the decision process much easier.
6. Product Import Export for WooCommerce
Product Import Export for WooCommerce streamlines the process of updating and managing your product catalog by facilitating bulk import and export of product data using CSV files.
This plugin simplifies the task of managing large product inventories, making it an essential tool for stores requiring frequent updates or migrations.
Key inventory management features
- CSV import and export: Enables easy import and export of WooCommerce products in bulk, including complex product types, tags, and attributes, using CSV format for seamless data management.
- Generative AI integration: Utilizes the ChatGPT API to auto-generate product descriptions for items lacking existing descriptions upon import, enriching product listings.
- Advanced data management: Offers tools for editing and syncing products, updating inventory, and filtering data, alongside automatic column mapping for efficient organization and update of product information.
- Support for images and reviews: Facilitates the export and import of product images and reviews along with ratings, ensuring comprehensive product data management and enhancing the customer shopping experience.
Pricing
The plugin offers a free version with basic functionalities while offering premium features such as expanding support for XML and Excel formats, custom product types, third-party plugin fields, etc., for import and export in its paid version. Pricing for this plugin typically starts from a base price of $69 per year for a single-site license, with the option to purchase a higher plan if you have multiple sites.
7. Return, Refund, and Exchange Manager for WooCommerce
Return, Refund, and Exchange Manager for WooCommerce enhances customer satisfaction by simplifying the return process and creating a WooCommerce refund system for your store, making it straightforward for both customers and store managers.
This plugin automates returns and exchanges, reducing the administrative burden and improving the overall shopping experience.
Key inventory management features
- Comprehensive refund system: Enables admins to set specific periods for refund, exchange, and cancellation requests, complete with a dedicated system for managing refunds, including customizable email templates.
- Predefined refund reasons & efficient tax handling: Merchants can specify reasons for refunds, making the process smoother for customers, and easily manage taxes and shipping charge refunds on returned products.
- Stock management & email notifications: Stock levels automatically adjust upon refund acceptance and tailored email notifications are sent for different refund stages to keep both customers and merchants informed.
- Advanced features for enhanced communication: Offers the ability for customers to send order-related messages with attachments, supporting WPML for multilingual communication.
Pricing
While the plugin is free to download, it offers additional features for a premium such as global shipping refund management, ShipRocket integration, partial refund/exchange/cancel, etc. Pricing typically starts at $69 per year for a single-site license, with the option to purchase a higher plan for multiple sites.
8. Smart Manager for WooCommerce
Smart Manager for WooCommerce boosts productivity by offering a powerful, Excel-like interface for managing products, orders, customers, and coupons quickly and efficiently.
This plugin provides bulk management capabilities, advanced search, and in-depth analytics, making it an indispensable tool for WooCommerce store owners.
Key inventory management features
- Bulk edit and management: Allows rapid updates to bulk product details, prices, stock, and attributes across thousands of product types ranging from subscriptions, coupons, bundles, product variants, etc.
- Advanced search and filtering: Enables precise searching and filtering, helping you quickly find and modify specific items in your inventory.
- Dashboard and analytics: Create multiple dashboards that are easily editable, and set customized viewer permissions and settings for each of them.
Pricing
Smart Manager comes in both Lite (free) and Pro (paid) versions. The Pro version expands on the basic functionalities with more advanced bulk editing options, scheduling capabilities, and support for additional post types and custom fields. The premium plan starts with a single-site license at $199 per year, with the option to purchase a higher plan for multiple sites. There is also an option to get a quote for a customized enterprise license.
Optimize WooCommerce inventory management with Jovvie
Effective inventory management is the backbone of a successful eCommerce business. From setting up your WooCommerce inventory, tracking product levels, and adjusting stock statuses, to understanding your stock reports, each element contributes to a smooth, efficient, and profitable operation.
Managing different product types, coupled with the use of robust WooCommerce inventory management plugins, can further streamline your workflow, enhance your stock control, and reduce the likelihood of overselling or stockouts.
With the right tools at your disposal, you can turn inventory management from a complex chore into a seamless part of your business.
In particular, Jovvie, with its live inventory synchronization feature and ability to manage complex products, makes it an indispensable plugin for those running both physical and WooCommerce stores. Its intuitive interface and comprehensive features provide a seamless bridge between your online and offline inventory, ensuring your stock levels are always accurate and up-to-date.
Ready to optimize your WooCommerce inventory management?
Start by taking Jovvie for a spin and experience firsthand how this powerful plugin can revolutionize the way you manage your WooCommerce and physical store’s inventory!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Does WooCommerce have an inventory management system?
Yes, WooCommerce comes with a built-in inventory management system that allows foundational stock management tasks within your WooCommerce store, such as tracking product stock levels, manually setting stock statuses, and managing back orders.
2. How do I bulk manage stock in WooCommerce?
To manage stock in bulk in WooCommerce, you can use the product bulk editing feature. Simply go to your WooCommerce product list, select multiple products, choose ‘Edit’ from the bulk actions menu, and then apply changes to stock quantities, status, or other inventory-related attributes for all selected products at once.
3. How do I enable stock management in WooCommerce?
You can enable stock management in WooCommerce by navigating to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Inventory in your WordPress dashboard. Here, you can check the box for ‘Enable stock management’, which will activate the feature, and allow you to manually manage stock levels, set low stock thresholds, and configure other inventory settings.
4. How do I set Inventory in WooCommerce?
To set inventory in WooCommerce, you would have to do that for each product separately. Go to the product editing page > product data section > inventory tab, where you can input stock quantities, manage stock status, enable backorders, and set individual stock-keeping units (SKUs) for inventory tracking and management.
The Best Point of Sale
for WooCommerce
Your products, customers, orders & inventory automatically synced, always ready for you to sell your products anywhere!
