Choosing between inventory software vendors

The short answer

• Shortlist by category first — spreadsheets, free tools, POS-attached, SMB systems, ERPs — then by vendor inside the right category.
• Trial with your own data, not the vendor's demo set; three trials is the honest ceiling.
• Run the same tests on every vendor: the one-record demo, the accounting handoff, the exceptions, year-two cost, the exit.
• BSimple welcomes that process — the free trial is your data, your workflow, your verdict.
• Context: the full inventory system holds the wider system, this page one stop in it.

The evaluation sequence that works

Pick the category before the vendor. A wholesale or distribution business evaluating POS tools has skipped a step; the categories sort first, vendors second — the inventory software list covers that layer. Shortlist three. Enough to compare, few enough that trials stay distinct in memory. Trial with your own data. Demo catalogues are choreographed; your real products, real quantities and real orders expose what choreography hides. Score the same five tests every time, because memory inflates whichever vendor demoed last.

The five tests: the one-record demo (stock, orders and invoices as one record — ask them to show, not assert); the accounting handoff (invoices push on approval, payment status mirrors back — watch it live); the exceptions (partial shipment, backorder, cancellation — the workflow's honesty lives here); the year-two bill (licences, users, modules, metered extras — BSimple's is the plan price, with SMS the only metered extra at $0.20 a segment); and the exit (can you export products, customers and history in a usable format — a vendor confident in its product answers instantly).

Support and references, weighed honestly

Test support before you are a customer: a pre-sales question sent through the real channel measures response time and depth — the same channel you will use in year one. Ask who answers: people who run the product or a queue that escalates. Australian businesses should weigh Australian hours; a 3am ticket reply from the other hemisphere is worth exactly what it costs. Treat vendor references as data, not proof — every reference is a hand-picked success. Weight independent signals higher: the public API and its scopes (BSimple publishes read projections for suppliers, locations, PAR, reorder, stocktakes, purchase orders and transfers), the quality of documentation, and whether the roadmap answers to customers or to a quarterly story.

None of this replaces the trial. It orders the shortlist so the trial measures the right things.

Where BSimple fits

We build BSimple, so weigh that — and then run the process on us anyway. The category is SMB business management for wholesale, manufacturing, distribution and trade businesses: one live record across stock, orders, purchasing and invoicing, a customer ordering portal, batch and lot traceability, recipes and production in the core plans, accounting handed to Xero or MYOB with US integrations rolling out, from $180/month (AUD). The vendors-and-companies landscape maps where we sit among the four kinds of company, and the stock software list frames the alternatives.

Where we lose on purpose: if you need ERP breadth, retail POS or HR in-suite, we are not your vendor — and the process above will tell you that quickly, which is its job.