The best inventory management software, whether used alone or with a point-of-sale (POS) system, should make it easy for businesses to track products, equipment, and assets from production to sale. If you’re not ready to invest in an inventory management system, consider the free options we explored in this guide.
While free inventory systems are more limited than paid systems, we found a free option with enough tools to start a small business, a free forever subscription with options to upgrade, cloud-based functionality, and an easy-to-use interface. Based on our evaluation, the six best free inventory management software for small businesses are:
6 The Best Inventory Management Software Business
1. Odoo
Odoo, a fully open source inventory system, takes the top spot for free inventory management software because it offers so much in its free plan― even automatic PO and expiration date tracking. It’s also completely unlimited, making it great for small businesses with large inventories; for a small fee, you can tie your inventory management software to a dozen other Odoo sales and marketing tools. Odoo is also integrated with e-commerce systems.
Odoo scored 4.38 out of his 5. It’s perfect for the price as it offers so many features for free. Inventory tools are great, but also: Multi-channel management and customer relationship management (CRM) require separate Odoo applications.
A big success also lies in the fact that while they only offer email and forum support, they offer training videos instead. Real customers love it, but experts rate it poorly because it’s not as highly rated as Square or Zoho.
2. Square
Square is known for his POS features for retailers and restaurants top the list of best POS system, best free POS system, best POS system for retailers, best free POS system for restaurants Ranked in However, Square also offers great inventory management tools for all his POS accounts.
With every Square for Retail account, retailers get real-time inventory tracking at the point of sale, e-commerce integration, mobile capabilities, point of sale, order management, product variants, and more. Square’s Square for Restaurants also offers menu management, order management, ingredient tracking, online ordering and delivery management, and more. do you know?
Each Square account also provides access to Square Online, Square’s ecommerce website builder, which integrates seamlessly with your Square account. Square received an overall score of 4.35 out of 5 in our review, placing it just below Odoo, which has more features for inventory management itself. But Square scored well on ease of use, price, and professional value.
The only thing keeping Square from scoring higher is his lack of kitting skills. Customer service hours are limited. Advanced reporting, supplier management, and orders locked behind paywalls. Square, like Zoho, has a great mobile app that you can use to sell, scan products, and count inventory.
3. Zoho
Zoho Inventory’s free plan offers unlimited inventory, a powerful integration suite, low inventory alerts, aggregation and bundling options, shipping tools, packing slip printing and discounted shipping from leading logistics providers such as US services.
It is ranked 3rd because it can create labels. Postal (USPS) and UPS available directly from your dashboard. Zoho is the best inventory management software for any small business, and thanks to its mobile his app, it is also a great choice for entrepreneurs who work on the go.
Zoho Inventory is rated 4.3 out of 5. Unlike Square, Zoho’s free plan limits users, locations, monthly sales orders, shipping labels, and shipment tracking. Inventory management software business from the company goes beyond his Odoo free plan. Additionally, the online program and mobile app are easy to use and highly rated by users.
4. ABC
Almyta Systems’ ABC Inventory offers an excellent choice for budget-conscious manufacturers and repair shops with simple needs, despite being a locally installed system with legacy interfaces. It comes with unlimited custom fields, 10 custom dropdown lists for additional properties, up to 20 levels of Bill of Materials (BOM) and more.
ABC Inventory offers many features specific to shop floor inventory, including: Work instructions, approvals, repair and maintenance instructions, and custom series for manufacturing or engineering.
Neither Zoho nor Square ship with this vendor-specific tool. In our review, ABC Inventory scored 3.58 out of 5. It did well in terms of pricing, as it allowed you to track an unlimited number of products by location, but it suffered a heavy loss in usability due to the date interface and lack of live customer support.
This inventory management software can only be installed on your PC and cannot be automatically integrated into other programs. If you want an option with more integrations, Square is the way to go.
5. SalesBinder
SalesBinder offers superior inventory management software that works in over 130 countries and multiple currencies. The intuitive user interface also has plenty of room for customization, so you can use it wherever you are and the way you want.
SalesBinder’s free plan does not allow integration. See Zoho or Odoo. The free plan also limits monthly records that count as inventory items, accounts, or orders. No other inventory tracker on this list has such limitations. However, SalesBinder offers powerful inventory recording and tracking capabilities along with powerful sales and CRM features.
Overall, SalesBinder scores 3.52 out of 5 in our evaluation. It performs well in inventory features, expert scores, and user experience categories. SalesBinder could have scored better if it had no product or user restrictions and allowed integrations in its free plan and if the mobile app scored better in user reviews. For a large inventory, consider Odoo, Square or Zoho.
6. Sortly
Sortly is a cloud-based inventory management software business that provides activity tracking, multi-location tracking, barcodes and audit trails. However, its noteworthy feature is its built-in barcode and QR scanner mobile app which works even in offline mode.
You can scan inventory in and out even when your phone app has no signal—Sortly will sync automatically as soon as you’re back online. Its offline capability paired with multi-location tracking makes Sortly ideal for on-the-go inventory management across multiple locations. Note that Zoho also has an offline mode for its mobile app, but Sortly offers inventory for multiple locations.
On this inventory management software business evaluation, Sortly scored 3.3 out of 5. The absence of low stock alerts, POs, item limits, plus the lack of integration capabilities in the free plan prevent Sortly from getting a high score. However, Sortly’s user interface is cloud-based and modern, setting it apart from ABC Inventory.
And that’s 6 inventory management business software. If you are interested in using it, make sure the inventory management software is suitable for the business you are running. Good luck!