Here is another of my occasional blog posts that documents my business and website processes—in this case, both!
An important obligation of being a business that sells physical goods (in this case, comics) is the need to track inventory. This is particularly needed for tax purposes since businesses are required to report the value of inventory on hand each year ("Cost of Goods" or COG) and, subtracting from the previous year's inventory (taking into account purchases that added to inventory), determine the Cost of Goods sold. As someone with more than a few items—26 individual issues and several trade paperback collections and special editions—this becomes a bit more complicated at scale.
Hypothetically, at minimum, inventory only needs to be taken annually: at the end of the year for the tax reporting requirements described above. But another reason to keep an eye on inventory throughout the year is to ensure that you do not run short of some items, at least if you are keeping them available. (I should add that, for tax purposes, it is always best to keep as little inventory in stock as possible in order to minimize tax liability since that inventory is counted as a saleable asset.)
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| ExpressInvoice logo |
In recent years I've used both invoicing software and separate inventory software to track sales, customers, product information, inventory, etc. Invoicing software also helps to calculate sales tax when applicable on invoices and sales, and at the end of the year, producing reports that total sales, tax and shipping fees collected, etc., for tax purposes. The invoices also serve as sales receipts for customers who have ordered from the WCG Comics website.
I've used a few invoicing and inventory applications over the years. They have become surprisingly pricey—nearly all of them are monthly subscription-based and none seem geared or friendly to very small business users like myself. (In addition, while invoicing and inventory apps often have overlap, they are still two distinct processes that seem to necessitate two separate programs.) I have used two standalone single-purchase software apps for years: ExpressInvoice and Inventoria from NCH Software, which worked in tandem for generating invoices and tracking inventory. They had their quirks and were not perfect but, given the one-time price, they sufficiently met my needs and I was happy with them.
That said, in recent years, these application have been moving towards a more frequent paid licensing update model, with somewhat higher prices, though they were still preferable to subscription based options. However, over the past year, I began encountering problems and receiving error messages because the two applications were not properly connecting or syncing—until recently, after recording a sale with ExpressInvoice, Inventoria would automatically adjust each item's inventory, keeping the inventory levels synchronized on both applications. The applications stopped recognizing each other and, when they did infrequently and seemingly randomly, the inventory levels were off because they had not been syncing regularly.
After looking for potential alternatives that would not require a subscription (surprisingly, I found none), I decided to look into the capabilities of my current payment processors: WooCommerce and Square.
As I have blogged elsewhere, last year, after migrating my website to WordPress, I shifted from PayPal to WooCommerce, an integrated WordPress plugin, as my online sales processor. And though WooCommerce was the engine driving the process, the Square platform was the actual payment processer behind the scenes. (I already use Square on my mobile device for credit card sales at conventions and signings—that said, I actually only adjusted the settings of the application earlier this year to begin automatically calculating tax and to make sales based on items in the store, versus charging just by amount.)
In any case, though Square and WooCommerce each have built in inventory features, since I already was using ExpressInvoice and Inventoria, I never activated them—until now.
Long story short, with ExpressInvoice and Inventoria becoming less dependable, after some fiddling, I activated and implemented the inventory functions in WooCommerce and Square, and sync'd them. So whenever an online sale is made in WooCommerce, the sale posts on Square and adjusts the inventory accordingly on both platforms.
The only drawback is that Square and WooCommerce feel a bit clunky and inflexible, particularly Square's report functions, which seem less straightforward and user-friendly than those generated by ExpressInvoice and Inventoria.
Admittedly, ExpressInvoice was somewhat of a redundancy, operating as a shadow system of sales made through WooCommerce and Square—but recording all sales in the app centralized both online and in-person cash sales and inventory tracking into one system. Although Square will now automatically record sales of items made on my website or mobile device, I will still need to enter cash sales after the fact and develop a process and system so that both my sales and inventory are accurately reflected on the platform.
In any case, though I'm glad to have cut ties with software that were somewhat redundant, at the same time I'll have to develop new workarounds and processes now that I've moved inventory tracking entirely to Square.
