Zoho Inventory - Walkthrough

Zoho Inventory is an important part of Zoho's suite of applications that are particularly designed for small to medium-sized businesses. It is a cloud-based tool and includes an application for both Android and iOS devices. Besides being exceptional inventory management software, Zoho inventory integration also offers multichannel selling, order management, good reporting options, warehouse management, etc.

It is all these qualities that make Zoho Inventory perfect for retailers who have both an online and a physical retail store. Zoho inventory management software is a great option for retailers who sell their products on a global scale because it streamlines everything for these retailers and makes business operations easier.

With both a mobile application for instant changes and an extensive range of desktop applications, the Zoho inventory is an extremely smart choice for the purpose of inventory management. It facilitates great management of inventory across various warehouses and also allows end-to-end tracking. If you are a retailer who is trying to find a dependable solution for managing inventory across multiple warehouses or know someone like that then Zoho inventory can help immensely.

In this blog, we will go through a complete walkthrough of the Zoho inventory to understand the tool much better.

Creating an Account

Zoho Inventory is a web-based application that works best and supports the latest versions of the browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Edge, Google Chrome, etc. There are two common ways in which you can sign up for the Zoho Inventory. If you already have an existing Zoho account then you can proceed with that and if you don't then the best probable way to move ahead is by going ahead with a new sign-up.

For a new sign-up, the first and foremost requirement will be to sign up for the 14 days free trial period. This period will enable you to test the product and use all its features included in the professional plan of the Zoho Inventory. You have an option of upgrading to either of the paid plans during or after the trial period.

To go ahead with a new sign-up for the Zoho Inventory, take the following steps:

Log in to the Zoho Inventory website.
Click on SIGN UP NOW. You can find this button in the top right corner of the page.
Enter the company's name because that will be the organization's name in the Zoho Inventory.
Make sure that you enter a regularly used email address and a strong password. This will act as your login credential.
Choose a country in which your company is located.
Mention the phone number for authentication purposes.
Click on SIGN UP to complete the process so that you can be navigated to the organization details page.

Zoho Inventory Quick Setup

Set up your organization details. When you sign up for the Zoho Inventory management software, you are going to be redirected to the organization details page that will ask you to enter some basic information about your business. On this page:

The portal name is going to be auto-generated. In case you wish, you have an option to suit this name according to your business needs.
You can now choose the industry type and enter the complete address of your organization
Choose the currency so that it serves as a base currency for all future transactions and cannot be edited later.
Now select the time zone of your company's location
For comparing the setup, click on the Click to Finish button so that you can be logged in and redirected to the Zoho Inventory organization.

Setting Up Data

After signing up for the Zoho Inventory and setting the organization details, you can also set up all the data and manage your business in the right way. In order to get started, follow the steps mentioned below. It is also highly recommended that the steps should be followed in this order only for a better start-up process.

The first step is to update the organization details. You can configure the organization details, upload the brand logo, and add significant information for completing the organization's profile.
The next step is to create and import the items. Click for loading your item details into the Zoho Inventory.
The third step is to make purchases. It is about purchasing stocks from different vendors.
The last and final step is to sell the products. Create sales orders for your customers and learn more about them.

Joining an Existing Zoho Account

In case you are already using one of the Zoho Finance apps such as Zoho Books then you can sign into the Zoho Inventory with similar credentials. Here are the steps that you should follow:

Log in to the Zoho Inventory website.
Click on the SIGN IN button that you can find on the top right corner of the page.
Begin to enter your Zoho Credentials.
After you sign in to the website, you are going to be redirected to a page that mentions all organizations that you are a part of in different Zoho Finance Apps.
Choose from any of the existing organizations for which you wish to create a Zoho Inventory organization.
Finally, click on the Join Organization button at the bottom of the page and go ahead.

This will let you set up a new organization with a similar name as the selected organization almost immediately in Zoho Inventory so that all the data can be synced easily with the existing organization.

Sign-up to Zoho Inventory

In case you have already signed up for the Zoho Inventory, from the next time ahead you will be able to directly sign in with the help of your registered email address. For signing in:

Go to the Zoho Inventory website
Now click on the Sign In button that is there in the top right corner of the window.
Enter the right email address and password and go ahead.
Click Sign in and you will be logged into the Zoho Inventory
In case you have also configured two-factor authentication, you can enter the One Time Password sent to your mobile phone.
Check the verify code.
In case you have not configured the two-factor authentication and wish to do the same then click on Manage TFA to do the same.

Zoho Inventory

Dashboard: The main purpose of the dashboard in the Zoho inventory management software is to give information on what all transactions were doing so far. It will contain an inventory summary, product details such as all items, item groups, low stock items, unconfirmed items, sales activity, etc. It is basically like a home page and the very first thing that you are going to see when you log into your Zoho Inventory account. Its main purpose is to give you a clear picture of all the sales completed by a company and stock summaries as well such as sales orders generated by far, stock purchased from a vendor for the selected period, top-selling items, etc.
Sidebar: The sidebar is to access all modules of the Zoho Inventory. It enables the creation of transactions like sales orders and invoices from the Sales modules and it also helps in recording the transaction such as receives and bills from the Purchases module.
Recent History: With the help of recent history, you can view the recently visited transactions.
Organization Name: Here you can manage and even change between different Zoho Inventory organizations.
Quick Create: The Quick Create tab enables you to create new transactions for different modules almost instantly.
Settings: This allows you to customize the Zoho inventory modules so that they become suitable for the business.
Help and Support: You can get quick access to the user guide and also reach out to the support team with the help of this section.
Notifications: Finally, notifications help in receiving all the important alerts on marketplace sync status, new product updates, and low stock updates.

Navigation in a Module

The module page of Zoho inventory management software is designed particularly to facilitate easy and simple transactions, filter them, navigate to the module settings, and perform other functions as well. It includes the following things:

Page Filters: With the help of this option, you can filter any data in the modules based on the present criteria. This also allows you to create your own filters.
Collapse Button: This button is for collapsing the sidebar and providing more space to navigate within the modules.
Creation Button: The creation button helps in creating transactions, contact, and also an item based on the module in which you might be tagged.
Action Buttons: This button helps in performing various actions on the transactions that are specific to different modules.
Search: You can look up items, different transactions, and contacts in the search bar.
Hamburger Icon: It helps in sorting the modules based on factors such as created time and last modified time. This icon also helps in importing and exporting the data regardless of the respective modules. Furthermore, you can also generate the respective module preference page from this icon.

Conclusion

It can be easily said that Zoho Inventory is one of the best-suited tools for retailers and online merchants. It is a scalable tool with four plans while also including a free plan.

If you are a retailer or know one who might be interested in the Zoho inventory integration then get in touch with the expert team of Encaptechno. We can help you from beginning to end until you start to see tangible results because of the Zoho Inventory implementation.

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