Inventory software system can help computer users easily manage the process of objects or materials tracking. These objects or materials could include merchandise, fixed assets, raw materials and equipment. A good inventory system can also provide automatic identification of inventory objects through the use of barcodes or scanning RFID tags.
Commercial and Open Source Inventory Software Prices Comparison
A commercial inventory software application is usually fully-featured but could cost hundreds or thousands of US dollars. Sometimes a small business owner or a personal user would rather consider cheaper solutions. Under this circumstance, free or open source inventory tracking and management systems can be better choices.
There are many kinds of free open source inventory software applications available for download on the Internet. They include Compiere, Openbravo, BlueErp, Opentaps and NolaPro.
Best Free Open Source Inventory Control Software Download Comparison and Reviews
Most of the best free and open source inventory software systems are parts of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. For example, Compiere is a free open source business ERP software program that integrates the functional modules of order management, accounting management and supply and inventory management. Compiere provides features that can help a user easily set up and customize a stock inventory system for a specific field. These features include:
- Products management: Compiere provides inventory management functions for four types of products, including items, services, resources and expenses. In Compiere, an item means a physical good that can be sold. This allows users set up inventory systems for the distribution of apparels, wines, PC hardware, textiles, books, auto parts and foods. Other types of products can help users set up inventory systems for store costs, rental management and asset tracking.
- Product categories: Product Categories can help a user group products with similar characteristics. For example, a wine vendor can manage the inventory of Chinese wine and European wine in different categories.
- Price lists entries: Compiere provides general and specific sales price lists, which allows control of different discounts from different suppliers.
- Compiere also provides other important functions for inventory management. They include bill of materials (BOM), distribution and multi-warehouse control, material receipts and replenishment, and costing of product and services.
Other web-based online inventory software systems are fully-featured and easy to use. A user can compare the functions of Compiere, Openbravo, BlueErp, Opentaps and NolaPro to choose the best solution. Free open source inventory systems can be perfect solutions for small business owners or personal users. Even big companies can consider them as alternatives to large-scale inventory systems to save costs.
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Chen Nanyang - Chen Nanyang's journalist career began in 2002 when he started writing for China's Nanfang City News, Singapore's United Morning Post and ...
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