Zoho CRM – Track your inventory!

Did you know that you can use Zoho CRM to track your inventory?  Tracking your inventory involves the following modules:

• Products
• Quotes (optional)
• Sales Orders (optional)
• Invoices
• Pricebooks (optional)
• Vendors
• Purchase Orders

The Products module has the following fields for inventory tracking:

• Quantity in Stock
  • incremented by a delivered Purchase Order
  • decremented by invoice (on create)
• Quantity Ordered
  • incremented by a created Purchase Order
  • decremented by a delivered Purchase Order
• Quantity in Demand
  • incremented by a Created Sales Order
  • decremented by a converted Sales order
• Re-order Level – set to receive re-order alerts

Details on how it works:

• Initialize your Product records and enter your initial Quantity in Stock, and Pricing values
• PURCHASING
  • Create a Purchase Order and add a product as a line item with a quantity
    • zoho automatically adds the quantity listed in the purchase order to the Quantity Ordered field in the product record.
  • When the products are received, mark the Purchase Order as “Delivered”
    • zoho automatically subtracts the quantity form the Quantity Ordered field and adds it to the Quantity in Stock field
  • Set a Re-order level and get alerts when inventory dips below established levels.
• SELLING
  • Optional – Create a Quote Record, add the product(s) as line items with a quantity. (Quotes do NOT affect product inventory!)
  • Optional – Create a Sales Order Record (or convert a Quote to a Sales Order) with line items (products with prices and quantities)
    • zoho automatically increments the Quantity in Demand field by the quantity listed in the Sales Order for all products listed as line items in a Sales Order 
  • Create an invoice (or convert a Quote or Sales Order to an invoice)
    • zoho automatically decrements the Quantity in Stock field by the quantity listed in the invoice for all products listed as line items in Invoice

Using this part of Zoho CRM is a great compliment to Quickbooks Online (which does not have inventory tracking).  Simply push your invoices to Quickbooks online (through Zoho’s Quickbooks Connector) for billing and tracking.