Inventory Management Software for Small Business

Keep your inventory, orders, and shipping connected as your business grows.

Managing inventory should not require juggling spreadsheets, checking multiple storefronts, or guessing how many products are available to sell.

Ordoro helps growing small businesses track inventory across sales channels and warehouses, manage kits and bundles, replenish stock, and keep orders moving through fulfillment.

Whether you're selling on Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, or several platforms at once, Ordoro gives you a central place to manage the inventory behind your sales.

Explore Ordoro Inventory Management | Start a 15-Day Free Trial

What Is Inventory Management Software for Small Business?

Inventory management software helps businesses track what products they have, where those products are stored, how much stock is available to sell, and when additional inventory is needed.

At its simplest, an inventory system answers four questions:

• What products do we have in stock?
• How many units are available to sell?
• Where are those products located?
• When should we order more?

As a business grows, inventory management involves much more than counting products. Every sale, return, purchase order, warehouse transfer, and product bundle can affect the quantities available to customers.

A dedicated inventory management system connects those activities so your team can work from accurate, consistent information.

For an ecommerce business, that also means keeping inventory synchronized with storefronts and marketplaces, avoiding overselling, and connecting stock management with order fulfillment.

When Does a Small Business Need Inventory Management Software?

A spreadsheet can work perfectly well when you're selling a handful of products and processing relatively few orders.

But inventory becomes harder to manage as your business adds products, sales channels, employees, or warehouses.

Here are common signs that you've outgrown manual inventory tracking.

You're selling the same inventory on multiple channels

Imagine you have 20 units of a product available.

You list that product on Shopify and Amazon. A customer purchases five units on Shopify, leaving 15 available.

If Amazon still shows 20 units, you risk selling more than you have.

Inventory management software helps prevent this by keeping stock quantities synchronized between your connected sales channels.

You're losing track of what's actually available

Having 100 units physically sitting in your warehouse does not necessarily mean you have 100 units available to sell.

Some inventory may already be committed to orders that haven't shipped. Other units may be reserved for specific sales channels or customers.

A good inventory system distinguishes between stock physically on hand, inventory committed to orders, and quantities available for new sales.

You don't know when to reorder

Running out of a popular product means missed sales. Ordering too much means tying up cash in stock that may sit on your shelves for months.

Inventory software helps you monitor low-stock levels, supplier lead times, and outstanding purchase orders so you can make better purchasing decisions.

Your warehouse is becoming difficult to manage

When you have hundreds or thousands of SKUs, employees need reliable ways to locate products, pick orders, and verify shipments.

Warehouse locations, pick lists, and barcode scanning help turn a process dependent on employee memory into one that is easier to repeat and scale.

You sell kits, bundles, or assembled products

If you sell individual products as well as bundles containing those same products, inventory becomes more complicated.

Your software needs to understand the relationship between the components and the bundles they belong to.

Without that relationship, it's easy to overstate how many bundles you can sell.

What Features Should Small Businesses Look for in Inventory Management Software?

The right inventory management system depends on your business model. A single-location retail store has different requirements from a growing ecommerce business shipping hundreds of orders every day.

Here are the capabilities worth evaluating.

1. Accurate stock tracking

Look for software that distinguishes between:

• Physical on hand: The number of units physically in stock.
• Committed inventory: Stock associated with existing customer orders.
• Available inventory: The quantity available for new sales after relevant commitments and reservations.
• Reordered inventory: Additional units ordered from suppliers but not yet received.

These distinctions matter because the number of products on a shelf is not always the number that should be advertised for sale.

2. Multichannel inventory synchronization

If you sell through Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, or other channels, look for software that can keep inventory quantities synchronized.

You should also be able to control which products and warehouses supply each sales channel, and how much inventory to make available.

3. Purchase orders and receiving

A purchasing workflow connects replenishment with your inventory records.

Look for the ability to:

• Maintain supplier information and product costs.
• Create and send purchase orders.
• Track items ordered from suppliers.
• Receive partial or complete deliveries.
• Update stock quantities when products arrive.

4. Barcode scanning and warehouse organization

Barcode scanning can help warehouse employees identify products, verify picking, and catch packing errors.

Warehouse locations are useful when products are stored across multiple aisles, shelves, bins, or facilities.

5. Kitting and bundling

If several products share the same underlying inventory, your system should calculate the availability of bundles from their components.

This is especially important for gift sets, multipacks, subscription boxes, and promotional bundles.

6. Integrations with your existing tools

Inventory software needs to work with the systems your business already uses, including ecommerce platforms, marketplaces, shipping carriers, and accounting applications.

Rather than evaluating integrations by the number of logos on a website, look closely at what information actually moves between the systems and how those workflows operate.

How Inventory Management Works in Ordoro

Ordoro is designed for ecommerce businesses that need inventory management connected with the orders and shipping workflows they already handle every day.

Here's how a typical inventory workflow works.

Step 1: Connect your sales channels

Connect your Shopify store, Amazon account, WooCommerce store, or other supported sales channels to Ordoro.

Ordoro imports product and order information from connected channels. You can then establish the relationships between products that represent the same physical inventory.

For example, a blue T-shirt sold on Shopify and the same blue T-shirt sold on Amazon should draw from the same underlying stock.

Once the products are correctly linked and inventory synchronization is configured, changes to available stock can be reflected across the connected channels.

For businesses using multiple Shopify locations or several warehouses, warehouse mappings determine how inventory and fulfillment locations relate to each other.

Learn more about connecting Shopify to Ordoro.

Step 2: Track stock across warehouses

Ordoro helps you manage inventory across multiple warehouse locations.

You can view stock quantities at different locations, organize products using warehouse bin locations, and manage transfers between warehouses.

For example, suppose your business stores products in two warehouses:

• Warehouse A has 80 units of a product.
• Warehouse B has 40 units.
• Your total physical inventory is 120 units.

If 25 units are already committed to customer orders, the combined available quantity may be 95 units, assuming there are no additional reservations or adjustments.

Ordoro gives your team visibility into these different inventory quantities instead of treating all physical inventory as immediately available for sale.

You can also control how much inventory is exported to different sales channels using reserve quantities and other inventory writeback settings.

Step 3: Manage kits and product bundles

Let's say you sell two products individually:

• Scented Candle
• Gift Box

You also sell a Candle Gift Set containing two candles and one gift box.

Suppose you currently have:

• 30 candles available
• 18 gift boxes available

How many gift sets can you sell?

Since each set requires two candles, your candle inventory supports 15 sets. Your gift-box inventory supports 18 sets.

You can sell 15 complete gift sets.

Ordoro's kitting system calculates bundle availability based on the available quantities of the component products.

When component inventory changes, the quantity of complete kits available can be recalculated automatically.

This is especially useful when the same component is sold both individually and as part of one or more bundles.

Ordoro also supports Bills of Materials (BOMs) for businesses that manufacture or assemble finished products in advance.

The distinction is important:

• Kits: Components are assembled or picked together when an order is fulfilled.
• BOMs: Components are consumed during a manufacturing process to create finished goods.

Learn more about kitting versus BOMs in Ordoro.

Step 4: Reorder products from suppliers

When products are running low, Ordoro's purchasing tools help you replenish inventory.

In Ordoro's Premium Inventory plan, you can manage suppliers, create purchase orders, and track incoming stock.

For example, you can:

1. Identify a product that is running low.
2. Select its supplier and the warehouse that will receive the products.
3. Create a purchase order for the additional quantity.
4. Send the purchase order to your supplier.
5. Record the products received when the shipment arrives.
6. Increase inventory quantities through the goods-receipt workflow.

Partial deliveries can also be recorded, so you don't need to pretend an entire purchase order arrived when only some of the items were delivered.

Ordoro can print barcode labels directly from goods receipts, making it easier to label newly received products before putting them away.

See how purchase orders and receiving work in Ordoro.

Step 5: Pick, pack, and ship orders

Inventory management doesn't end when an order is placed.

Warehouse employees still need to find the correct products, pack them accurately, and ship them to customers.

Ordoro connects inventory and order management with shipping workflows.

Depending on your configuration and plan, your team can:

• Print batch pick lists.
• Organize products using warehouse locations.
• Scan barcodes to verify the items being packed.
• Catch incorrect SKUs or quantities before shipping.
• Print shipping labels.
• Use automation rules to reduce repetitive order-processing work.

For example, if an employee accidentally scans a blue shirt when an order requires a black shirt, Ordoro's barcode verification workflow can identify the mismatch.

This helps businesses improve fulfillment accuracy without relying entirely on manual checking.

Learn how Ordoro's barcode verification works.

Step 6: Understand why inventory quantities changed

One of the most frustrating inventory problems occurs when the quantity in your system doesn't match what someone expected.

Was the difference caused by a new order? A purchase order receipt? A return? A stock adjustment?

Ordoro's Inventory Events provides a SKU-level history of inventory changes.

The records can help your team investigate:

• When a quantity changed.
• Which warehouse was affected.
• Whether the change was related to an order, receiving, or an adjustment.
• How available and committed quantities were affected.
• Which user or workflow was associated with the event.

Instead of only seeing the current quantity, you can investigate the activity that produced it.

Learn about Ordoro Inventory Events.

Real Small Businesses Using Ordoro

Features matter, but it's easier to evaluate inventory software when you see how real businesses use it.

My Girlfriend's Quilt Shoppe: Managing 8,000+ SKUs

My Girlfriend's Quilt Shoppe is a family-owned business selling fabrics, quilting supplies, patterns, and machines through Shopify, WooCommerce, and physical stores.

As the business expanded, managing inventory across multiple systems became increasingly difficult.

The company chose Ordoro to bring shipping, inventory, purchasing, and manufacturing workflows together.

Its operations include:

• Managing more than 8,000 SKUs.
• Importing orders from multiple sales channels.
• Purchasing products from approximately 100 suppliers.
• Using kitting and fractional kitting for products sold in different quantities.
• Using Bills of Materials to support manufacturing.
• Processing thousands of orders each month.

Fractional kitting is particularly useful for businesses selling products such as fabric in different measurements or quantities.

Instead of treating each selling unit as unrelated inventory, Ordoro helps maintain relationships between the underlying stock and the quantities sold.

Read the My Girlfriend's Quilt Shoppe case study.

19nine: Making Warehouse Fulfillment More Efficient

19nine is an apparel company specializing in retro college basketball clothing.

Its operation includes more than 4,000 SKUs and, according to its case study, typically processes 2,500 to 5,000 or more orders per month.

Before adopting Ordoro, the team printed stacks of invoices and sorted orders manually. Warehouse employees often relied on their own knowledge to locate products, which could lead to repeated trips through the warehouse and picking errors.

With Ordoro, 19nine started using batch pick lists, shipping presets, order tags, and automation to organize fulfillment more efficiently.

Instead of picking every order separately, employees could pick products for multiple orders together.

The company also used tags to distinguish between ready-to-ship products and print-on-demand orders, making it easier to organize work across its team.

19nine illustrates an important point: inventory management and fulfillment efficiency are closely connected. Knowing what you have is only part of the job. Your team also needs efficient ways to find, pick, and ship those products.

Read the 19nine case study.

Best Inventory Management Software for Small Businesses

There isn't one inventory management system that's best for every small business.

The right solution depends on what you sell, how you sell it, and how complicated your operations have become.

Here are five options worth evaluating.

1. Ordoro — Best for growing ecommerce businesses that need inventory and shipping together

Ordoro combines inventory management with order processing, shipping, and connected ecommerce workflows.

It's particularly well suited to businesses selling across multiple online channels, managing shared inventory, fulfilling orders in-house, or working with kits and bundles.

Key capabilities:

• Multichannel inventory synchronization.
• Multiple warehouse management.
• Kitting and bundling.
• Supplier purchasing and receiving on eligible plans.
• Barcode-based fulfillment workflows.
• Inventory history and operational reporting.
• Shipping and dropshipping workflows within the Ordoro platform.

Considerations: Ordoro's paid inventory plans are designed for businesses with operational needs beyond a basic stock list. A very small business that only wants to count a few products may be better served by a spreadsheet or a simpler application.

Explore Ordoro Inventory.

2. Zoho Inventory — A flexible option for small businesses

Zoho Inventory offers inventory tracking, order management, purchasing, warehouse management, and connections to ecommerce platforms.

It's worth considering for businesses seeking an inventory system that can also fit into the broader Zoho ecosystem.

Best fit: Small businesses that want inventory and order management alongside accounting and other business applications.

Visit Zoho Inventory.

3. Sortly — Best for straightforward visual inventory tracking

Sortly emphasizes ease of use, mobile inventory tracking, product photographs, and barcode and QR code scanning.

It's useful for businesses that primarily need to organize physical products, equipment, materials, or supplies.

Best fit: Businesses whose main priority is knowing what items they have and where those items are located, without requiring a complex ecommerce fulfillment workflow.

Visit Sortly.

4. inFlow Inventory — Best for inventory-heavy purchasing and warehouse operations

inFlow offers tools for inventory control, purchasing, receiving, barcode workflows, sales orders, and manufacturing-related operations.

It's worth evaluating for companies that buy, stock, assemble, and sell physical goods through structured purchasing and warehouse processes.

Best fit: Wholesalers, distributors, and small businesses that need detailed inventory and purchasing workflows.

Visit inFlow.

5. Cin7 — Best for businesses with more complex inventory operations

Cin7 offers inventory and order management capabilities for retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and multichannel sellers.

Its products cover workflows such as purchasing, inventory tracking, manufacturing, integrations, and wholesale operations.

Best fit: Businesses evaluating a broader operational system with inventory, manufacturing, and wholesale requirements.

Visit Cin7.

How to choose between these systems

Before selecting software, consider five practical questions:

1. Does the system support the sales channels you actually use?
2. Can it accurately track physical, committed, and available inventory?
3. Does it support your purchasing, warehouse, and product-bundling workflows?
4. Can your team use it without requiring constant manual reconciliation?
5. Is the pricing appropriate for your current operational complexity?

A business with one storeroom and 50 products may need something very different from a business managing 5,000 SKUs across Shopify, Amazon, and multiple warehouses.

Choose the system that matches your workflows rather than the one with the longest feature list.

How to Set Up Inventory Management for a Small Business

Whether you're starting with a spreadsheet or implementing dedicated software, the fundamentals of inventory management are similar.

Step 1: Give every product a unique SKU

A stock keeping unit, or SKU, identifies a specific product or variation.

For example:

• TSHIRT-BLK-S — Black T-shirt, Small
• TSHIRT-BLK-M — Black T-shirt, Medium
• TSHIRT-BLU-M — Blue T-shirt, Medium

Separate variations need separate SKUs when you want to track their inventory independently.

A consistent SKU structure makes inventory reporting, barcode scanning, and multichannel product matching easier.

Step 2: Count your starting inventory

Before using a new system, establish accurate opening quantities.

Record the physical quantity of each SKU and identify where it is stored.

If you're moving from a spreadsheet, check for duplicate SKUs, inconsistent naming, and products that are no longer sold.

Step 3: Organize your storage locations

Assign locations to your products, especially if your inventory spans multiple shelves, aisles, rooms, or warehouses.

For example:

• Warehouse A
• Aisle 3
• Shelf B
• Bin 04

Consistent location data helps warehouse employees find products without relying on memory.

Step 4: Connect sales and inventory

If you sell online, connect your storefronts and marketplaces to your inventory system.

Confirm that products are correctly linked, inventory synchronization is enabled where appropriate, and quantities are being sent to the intended sales channels and locations.

Test with a small number of SKUs before relying on the setup for your entire catalog.

Step 5: Establish reorder points

A reorder point tells you when it's time to replenish inventory.

A simple starting formula is:

Reorder point = Expected demand during supplier lead time + Safety stock

For example:

• Average daily sales: 6 units
• Supplier lead time: 10 days
• Safety stock: 20 units

Your reorder point would be:

6 × 10 + 20 = 80 units

When inventory reaches the reorder point, it's time to consider placing another order.

The appropriate safety stock depends on demand variability, supplier reliability, and the consequences of running out.

Step 6: Review inventory regularly

Even with automated software, physical inventory counts remain important.

You can use periodic counts or cycle counts to compare your physical inventory with the quantities recorded in your system.

When discrepancies appear, investigate their causes rather than simply changing the numbers and moving on.

Can Small Businesses Manage Inventory Using Excel or Google Sheets?

Yes. For many very small businesses, a spreadsheet is a practical starting point.

You can create a basic inventory sheet using columns such as:

• SKU
• Product name
• Product category
• Supplier
• Physical quantity
• Committed quantity
• Available quantity
• Reorder point
• Unit cost
• Warehouse location

You can also use formulas to flag products that have fallen below their reorder points.

Google Sheets makes it easier for several people to access a shared inventory file, while Excel offers a familiar environment for organizing data and calculations.

However, spreadsheets have an important limitation: they don't automatically know when a product is sold on Shopify, received from a supplier, returned by a customer, or shipped from a warehouse.

Unless you build and maintain integrations, someone has to record those changes.

This is where inventory management software becomes valuable. It connects inventory quantities with the activities that change them.

If a spreadsheet still meets your needs, there is no reason to replace it simply for the sake of adopting software.

But if your team spends hours reconciling quantities, correcting inventory discrepancies, or copying information between systems, dedicated inventory software may be worth the investment.

How Much Does Inventory Management Software Cost?

Inventory management software can range from free spreadsheets and limited free applications to specialized systems costing hundreds of dollars per month.

The price generally reflects the complexity of the workflows supported.

A basic system may be sufficient for recording products and quantities.

More advanced systems can support multiple warehouses, ecommerce integrations, purchasing, kits, barcode workflows, automation, and manufacturing.

Ordoro Inventory Pricing

Ordoro offers separate apps for Shipping, Inventory, and Dropshipping.

Its Inventory plans include:

Advanced Inventory — $349/month

Designed for businesses that need inventory synchronization across channels, multiple warehouses, kitting, allocation, and related inventory management capabilities.

Premium Inventory — $499/month

Adds more advanced workflows, including purchase orders, goods receipts, Bills of Materials, manufacturing orders, and stocktakes.

Plan limits and additional charges may apply. Ordoro also offers Shipping plans separately, including a free Shipping tier. The free Shipping tier is not a free version of the Inventory app.

You can try Ordoro for 15 days without a credit card.

View current Ordoro pricing and plan details.

The important question is not simply which inventory software has the lowest monthly subscription cost.

It's whether the software saves enough employee time, prevents enough avoidable mistakes, and improves enough of your daily operations to justify the cost.

Basic Inventory Management Methods Every Small Business Should Know

Good inventory management requires more than software. A few simple methods can help you decide how much stock to carry and which products deserve the most attention.

ABC Analysis

ABC analysis groups products according to their importance to the business.

For example:

• A items: High-value or strategically important products requiring close attention.
• B items: Moderately important products.
• C items: Lower-value products that may require less intensive monitoring.

The categories can be based on annual consumption value, sales contribution, or another consistent measure.

ABC analysis helps teams focus their inventory management effort where it has the greatest impact.

First-In, First-Out (FIFO)

FIFO is an inventory rotation method in which older stock is used or sold before newer stock.

This can be particularly useful for products with expiration dates, shelf-life concerns, or a risk of becoming obsolete.

An operational FIFO picking process is different from the accounting method used to value inventory. Businesses should distinguish between those two concepts when selecting software.

Just-in-Time Inventory

Just-in-time inventory aims to reduce the amount of stock a business holds by replenishing products closer to when they are needed.

This can reduce carrying costs, but it also increases dependence on reliable suppliers and predictable demand.

For small ecommerce businesses, maintaining some safety stock is often more practical than attempting to eliminate inventory buffers entirely.

Regular Cycle Counting

Instead of closing your warehouse to count every product at once, cycle counting involves checking subsets of inventory throughout the year.

For example, you might count your fastest-moving products more frequently than slow-moving items.

This helps catch discrepancies earlier and maintain more reliable records.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the simplest way to manage inventory for a small business?

Start with unique SKUs, accurate inventory counts, consistent storage locations, and a repeatable process for recording purchases and sales.

For a small product catalog, Excel or Google Sheets may be sufficient. As products, orders, and sales channels increase, software can reduce manual inventory updates and reconciliation.

What is the best inventory management software for a small business?

The best choice depends on your business model.

Sortly is worth considering for straightforward visual inventory tracking. Zoho Inventory and inFlow offer broader stock and order management capabilities. Cin7 supports more complex operational requirements.

Ordoro is particularly well suited to growing ecommerce businesses that want inventory management connected with their sales channels, order management, and shipping workflows.

Does Google offer an inventory management system?

Google Sheets can be used to build a basic inventory tracker, but it is not a dedicated inventory management system.

You can manage SKUs, quantities, suppliers, and reorder points using a spreadsheet. Dedicated inventory software provides additional integrations and automated workflows.

Can inventory management software prevent overselling?

Inventory software can significantly reduce overselling by keeping available quantities synchronized across connected sales channels.

However, the accuracy of those quantities depends on correct product mapping, inventory settings, sales-channel behavior, and synchronization timing. No inventory system can guarantee that every oversell is eliminated.

What's the difference between inventory management and warehouse management?

Inventory management focuses on how much stock a business owns, where it's held, how it's committed, and when it needs replenishment.

Warehouse management focuses more specifically on the physical movement of that stock, including receiving, bin locations, picking, packing, and warehouse transfers.

The two functions overlap, and businesses often benefit from systems that connect them.

Can Ordoro work with Shopify and Amazon?

Yes. Ordoro integrates with Shopify and Amazon, along with other ecommerce platforms and marketplaces.

Businesses can use Ordoro to manage inventory and orders across supported channels, with synchronization behavior controlled by product settings and warehouse configurations.

For more detail about Shopify specifically, see Ordoro vs. Shopify Inventory Management.

Can Ordoro manage products sold as kits or bundles?

Yes. Ordoro supports kitting and bundling, including kits containing products that are also sold individually.

Kit availability is calculated from component inventory so businesses can manage shared stock without maintaining completely separate quantities for every bundle.

Does Ordoro support purchase orders and manufacturing?

Yes. Ordoro's Premium Inventory plan includes purchase orders, goods receipts, Bills of Materials, and manufacturing orders.

These tools connect purchasing and manufacturing activities with inventory quantities.

Make Inventory Management Easier as Your Business Grows

Your inventory system should make it easier to run your business, not create another set of spreadsheets and manual tasks.

If you're selling across multiple ecommerce channels, managing a growing product catalog, handling product bundles, or coordinating inventory across warehouses, Ordoro can help you bring those workflows together.

Manage your stock, connect your orders, organize purchasing, and keep fulfillment moving from one platform.

See how Ordoro can fit your inventory workflow.

Explore Ordoro Inventory Management | Start Your 15-Day Free Trial