Guide / evaluation
An inventory management system questionnaire that works
Twenty questions that separate a real system from a demo — for businesses evaluating software, and for students and researchers building a survey. Use them on any vendor, including us.
The key facts
- Two audiences, one page: businesses choosing a system, and students/researchers studying the domain — the questions differ, the core concepts do not.
- The business questionnaire covers five areas: current state, stock truth, purchasing, orders, and accounting.
- The research angle: what to measure (accuracy, fill rate, adjustment frequency) and what not to claim without data.
- No invented benchmarks here: every number that matters is one you collect in your own business.
- 01The key facts
- 02For businesses: the twenty questions
- 03For students and researchers: what to measure
- 04Using the questionnaire on vendors — including us
For businesses: the twenty questions
Current state. 1. Where does the stock record live today, and who updates it? 2. How long after a real movement does the record reflect it? 3. When did you last have a stockout that surprised you? 4. What did that cost, honestly?
Stock truth. 5. Can two locations hold separate, correct quantities? 6. Can the system show why a quantity changed — the movement behind it? 7. Does it guard against selling below zero, deliberately or silently? 8. Do boxes, cases and singles stay the same truth? 9. Do batches or expiry dates matter to any product you sell? 10. When someone keys 100 instead of 10, what catches it?
Purchasing. 11. How is a reorder decided today — data or memory? 12. Can incoming stock (on order) be seen before re-ordering? 13. Do supplier invoices reconcile against orders, including price variances?
Orders. 14. How many hands touch an order between placement and invoice? 15. Can customers order themselves, at their own pricing? 16. Does the floor see the same order the office took?
Accounting. 17. Does the invoice cross without re-entry, tax intact? 18. Does payment status flow back? 19. Who owns quantities — operations or books — and is that decided on purpose? 20. What does the vendor refuse to do? (The honest answer is a feature; the accounting boundary is ours.)
For students and researchers: what to measure
Questionnaires in this domain go wrong by measuring opinions about software rather than outcomes of record-keeping. The defensible metrics are operational: inventory accuracy (recorded vs counted, per cycle count), fill rate (lines shipped complete as ordered), adjustment frequency (corrections per week, and their reasons), and order cycle time (placement to dispatch, per stage). Ask about events, not attitudes — "when did the record last disagree with the shelf, and what was the cause?" produces evidence; "how satisfied are you with your system?" produces noise.
Do not fabricate benchmarks: if your literature review cites accuracy percentages, cite the study properly or collect your own — a questionnaire run in even one real business beats invented statistics. For the system concepts behind the questions, the inventory guide and the system examples are the grounding reading.
Using the questionnaire on vendors — including us
We build BSimple, so weigh that — and answer the twenty with it: live multi-location quantities with movement history, negative-inventory guardrails, batch and expiry tracking, purchasing from demand with supplier reconciliation, customer ordering portals, and invoices that push to Xero and MYOB (US integrations rolling out) with payment status mirroring back. What we refuse: ERP weight (no MRP, no HR), a storefront, and any claim of a free product.
The trial is the questionnaire with the answers demonstrated: load your products, run one order and one count, and grade every answer against your current process.
Frequently Asked Questions
What questions should I ask before buying inventory software?
The twenty above, but the load-bearing three are: can it show the movement behind any quantity; who owns quantities, operations or the books; and what does the vendor refuse to do. Vendors answer feature lists easily — those three require a real system and an honest vendor.
Can I use this questionnaire as a survey for research?
Yes, with attribution discipline: the metric definitions above (accuracy, fill rate, adjustment frequency, cycle time) are standard operational measures — define each in your methodology, cite the domain literature properly, and collect your own data rather than quoting numbers you cannot source.
How long should an evaluation take?
A week of running your real products through a trial answers more than a month of demonstrations. Load data, run one order and one count, then ask the failure questions — where the demo hid work is where the implementation will hurt.
What is the most revealing question for a vendor?
"Show me a quantity that changed and tell me exactly why." Systems with a real movement model answer in seconds; systems that store adjusted totals start describing reports. The pause before the answer is the finding.
Does BSimple pass its own questionnaire?
On operations, yes — and the trial exists so you can verify rather than believe it. Where it scores zero is deliberate: no MRP scheduling, no HR/payroll, no storefront, no free tier. A vendor with no refusals is describing a product they have not built honestly.
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