Ask HN: Inventory Management Software Stack for Small Businesses?
Basically, a friend of mine has an import/export business reselling various items. Everything they do is manual right now, but the general business flow:
- Customers submit orders via some app
- Payments are processed manually via bank details
- Inventory is manually tracked, shipped overseas via some carrier (that does not provide tracking) and then delivered last mile to customers
- There are two types of inventory: in stock items (have it ready to ship) and pre-order only. Pre-order items are ordered from vendors only after customers place an order.
What I'm looking for:
- Some way to scan barcodes, and get item information (I'm aware scanners exist, but the integrations are what would make this valuable, and something I am having a hard time understanding)
- Scanning would ideally establish inventory. The inventory could then be linked to this third party shop.
- Inventory should be able to have certain statuses (e.g. if scanned by person x, it means it's in Country X, if scanned by person y, it means it's in Country Y)
- It would be great to track (even with manual edits) how much was paid for each item, and how much it sold for.
- Inventory audits should be possible (via barcodes)
Things to keep in mind:
- This is an international business, so anything centered around the US would be a no go.
- Inventory comes from a wide range of sources, and the same items are rarely kept in stock for long. So anything that centers on having some core items that are periodically "reordered" when inventory is low would be low value add.
- It seems like a lot of these functions are handled by separate businesses, and many of them want very expensive annual subscriptions. This is a <$100k/year revenue business right now, so most of these more expensive ones are out of the question. I think this business does have the potential to grow to ~500k+/year revenue with stronger automation.
- It seems like many of these also require huge learning curve to use.
I want to help my friend with their business. I am an experienced software engineer, so throwing together some automation as needed is not a big challenge, but I would rather buy something affordable off the shelf if it exists to minimize complexity/avoid becoming a bottleneck to their business if something goes wrong.
If you were in this position, what tools would you use? What might you build custom?