- An accurate and efficient order management system
is key to streamline eCommerce operations.
Unfortunately, 43% of small business owners
still count inventory by hand, rely on pen and paper,
oh my goodness, and manually key in data, yikes.
(chuckles)
The time spent managing or fixing fulfillment issues
is time that you could spend on activities
that help your business grow, right?
Whether it's coming up with new product ideas
or growing your brand.
- So, let's talk about inventory management
and how WooCommerce and a few handy extensions
create a streamline order management flow
for your eCommerce business,
starting off with understanding inventory management
and demand planning.
Now, always having the right stock at the right time
and in the correct quantity can be challenging.
It involves being in control of how inventory is stored,
knowing how much product you have for sale,
knowing what to reorder, and having the right order cycles.
Now, that's a lot
for a small to medium sized business to handle,
especially when you're managing
everything else in your life
while also trying to grow your business, as Emma said.
And if you're also finding success
in your marketing efforts,
being exposed to those opportunities
mean your inventory management systems
need to be able to keep up.
It only takes one video or post to become popular,
then all of a sudden, you're sold out.
- While being out of stock
might sound like a good thing for you,
it doesn't take much for your customers
to go and look elsewhere,
but if you are ordering too much,
well yeah, you'll have dead stock
that will just sit on your shelves and collect dust.
Many business owners will rely on perceived past performance
and sort of guess to a good guesstimate
as to when it's time to order or reorder more inventory.
Now, others use quantitative methods,
like for example where decisions are made
based on how products have performed in the past.
But to do this, you need to have accurate data on hand,
which can be a little tricky
if you're working with manual systems
that are susceptible to human error.
Now the easiest way to get this right
is to invest in inventory management software.
This way, you're more likely to order stock that sells.
And the best part is,
the software can crunch the numbers for you.
- Now, there are a number of ways
to manage inventory for your WooCommerce store
from manual to fully automated solutions.
You need to choose the approach that best suits you,
your business, and your budget.
And now, while Excel is a good,
low-cost solution for startups, I use it day-to-day,
once a business begins to scale and grow in complexity,
something so manual
can quickly turn into a cumbersome process
that will end up costing you hours of wasted time.
And if you find that you're struggling
with your current method,
then it's probably time to upgrade.
- That's right Nealey.
And there are a number of tried and tested
inventory management extensions available
in the woocommerce.com marketplace.
Let's start off with sequential order numbers.
By default, WooCommerce assigns random order numbers
to each order.
Now, if you want your orders in chronologic order,
the sequential orders pro extension is what you need.
And the plugin offers the same functionality
as the native features
in the managed WordPress eCommerce hosting plan
and you also have the ability
to choose a starting order number
and to add a prefix or suffix to the order numbers.
- And if you don't have our hosting plan,
another option
to implement sequential orders into your store
is to use order status manager.
For some businesses,
the default WooCommerce order statuses
may not suit their workflow.
With the WooCommerce order status manager plugin,
you can create custom order statuses and workflows,
enabling your business to process orders efficiently.
You can also use the extension to create a next status flow.
With this tool,
you can add an action button to your order pages
and bulk actions to your orders dashboard,
and you'll also have the option to add one from scratch
or to import one.
The latter works
if you already have created custom order statuses
using another plugin or code snippet.
- WooCommerce only auto completes paid orders
for products that are both downloadable and virtual.
And depending on your store,
you may have other types of orders
that you want to automatically complete.
And with the order status control extension,
you control which types of paid orders
automatically receive a completed status.
And when an order set to autocomplete is paid,
it skips the processing status
and goes right to the completed status,
and this helps streamline order administration
for those that don't require any action on your part
between the different steps.
- Fortunately, WooCommerce provides a straightforward
and easy-to-use platform
for managing your eCommerce orders.
It allows you to automate repetitive work
and gives you clear details about current inventory levels
and orders that need attention.
Now, that's a wrap,
but your journey doesn't have to end here
because we have over 300 videos for you to watch.
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Thanks for watching.
This is The Journey.