Do you sell physical products in your WooCommerce store? If so, you already know that managing inventory and orders is crucial for a successful shop. But as your store grows, keeping your ecommerce operations efficient becomes even more important.
Effective sales and inventory management can save you time and money while increasing customer satisfaction. Are you ready to take your online store to the next level? Read on to discover advanced inventory management techniques that can help you achieve that.
What Does an Inventory Management Extensions Do?
Inventory management is crucial for any retail or e-commerce business. It involves tracking and controlling the flow of goods, ensuring optimal stock levels, and managing inventory across multiple channels. Inventory management plugins to allow integration with e-commerce platforms to simplify and streamline these tasks. They enhance inventory control and optimization and make it easier for businesses to manage their stock effectively.
Why Use WooCommerce Inventory Management Extensions?
The WooCommerce Inventory Management plugin helps you with the following:
Real-Time Stock Updates
WooCommerce inventory management plugins offer automated stock updates for real-time accuracy. This helps minimize stock discrepancies often caused by human errors. Automation also reduces order processing errors. Some inventory management plugins offer item reorder alerts and facilitate real-time purchase orders when stock levels drop to make sure key products are always available and prevent lost sales.
Synchronization Across Multiple Channels
These plugins can synchronize stock across your website, marketplaces, and social media to ensure consistent inventory levels. This prevents overselling and makes physical stocktaking quicker and more accurate.
Informed Decision-Making
Many WooCommerce stock management plugins include analytical tools that track best-selling items and sales patterns. This data helps store owners decide which items to restock or discontinue for maximum profitability.
6 WooCommerce Inventory Management Extensions
You can significantly enhance your platform’s WooCommerce stock management capabilities by integrating your WooCommerce store with specialized inventory management extensions.
This guide will cover the six best WooCommerce inventory management extensions for 2024. Learn about their key features and pricing to choose the best fit for your online store.
- Custom Stock Status for WooCommerce
- WooCommerce Pre Order
- Multi Locations Inventory Management for WooCommerce
- WooCommerce Product Stock Manager
- WooCommerce Attribute Stock Management
- WooCommerce Reserve Stock on Add to Cart
1. Custom Stock Status for WooCommerce
WooCommerce Custom Stock Status extension enables you to provide accurate information about the stock availability of your products on both category and product pages. It automatically displays custom statuses based on various criteria such as stock quantity, specific products, and their current stock status. This extension allows you to create multiple text and image-based stock statuses. With rule-based management, you can restrict these statuses to specific user roles, products, and categories. You can also set up different messages for varying quantity ranges and prioritize which status to display for a single product.
This inventory management extension supports four types of stock availability messages: image only, text only, text with a date, and text with an icon. It also allows customization of status text to show the remaining stock count dynamically.
Key Features:
- Choose custom placements to display stock status on product and listing pages
- Create attractive and meaningful stock statuses with text, images, and icons
- Modify text-based statuses’ color and font size
- Show or hide stock status based on user roles
- Set stock status based on stock quantity ranges
- Define statuses based on current stock status
Price:
- $4.08/month
- $49/annually
Download:
- 3K+ Downloads
- 4.8 Rating
Technical Compatibility:
- WordPress Version Required: 4.0.0 or Higher
- WooCommerce Version Required: 3.5.0 or Higher
2. WooCommerce Pre Order
WooCommerce Pre-Order extension allows customers to pre-order their favorite items before they become available or if they are currently out of stock. This extension replaces the “Add to Cart” button with a customizable “Pre-Order” button, enabling you to personalize the label, color scheme, and message on product detail pages and in the shop. You can also adjust the placement of this button on both the product and shop pages.
With the WooCommerce Pre-Order extension, you can enable multiple alerts for both the admin and the customer. Additionally, the extension allows you to offer special discounts to encourage customers to pre-order from your store. You can set a regular price, increase the price, or provide a discount for pre-orders.
Advanced scheduling options enable you to set start and end dates for pre-orders using a calendar or specify a time interval after the pre-order is placed. This extension enhances the standard back-order feature, making it a versatile tool for managing product availability and driving sales.
Key Features:
- Offer pre-orders on unreleased products based on user roles
- Provide discounts or charge extra for pre-orders and backorders
- Personalize pre-order badges and buttons
- Restrict more than one purchase of products
- Display a pre-order badge on the shop and product pages
- Customize email notifications for customers and admins
Price:
- $8.25/month
- $99/annually
Technical Compatibility:
- WordPress Version Required: 4.0.0 or Higher
- WooCommerce Version Required: 3.5.0 or Higher
3. Multi Locations Inventory Management for WooCommerce
Multi Locations Inventory Management For WooCommerce extension allows you to view and manage your entire inventory from one place. The complete stock information, including product prices, tax details, stock quantities, and warehouse locations, is displayed in a table format. You can filter the inventory based on product SKU, name, category, and quantity to find the specific stock information you need.
This extension enables you to explore store inventory from all or selected categories, product types, stock statuses, and locations. Once the inventory is listed, you can edit options for each product, such as adjusting the original and sale price, managing stock and editing stock quantity, setting a low stock threshold, allowing back orders with or without notifying customers, and enabling the product to be sold individually.
You can color code various stock statuses by selecting custom colors, making it easy to identify and differentiate stock statuses within your large inventory. Additionally, you can set an overstock threshold value, beyond which the inventory will be marked as overstocked.
Key Features:
- View inventory changes in a dashboard across all store locations
- Display store locations for each product on shop and product pages
- Add and manage multiple warehouse locations
- Create multiple inventories for simple and variable products
- Import/export inventory data in bulk
Price:
- $10.75/month
- $129/annually
Download:
- 1K+ Downloads
Technical Compatibility:
- WordPress Version Required: 4.0.0 or Higher
- WooCommerce Version Required: 3.5.0 or Higher
4. WooCommerce Product Stock Manager
WooCommerce Product Stock Manager extension simplifies inventory management by allowing you to update stock quantities, statuses, names, pricing, and other essential information through a simple list view, eliminating the need to visit each product page individually. This extension lets you sort and filter products based on various attributes such as name, price, and stock quantity, making it easier to manage your inventory.
The extension maintains a comprehensive product stock log to track all changes in stock levels. Additionally, WooCommerce Bulk Stock Management supports importing and exporting stock quantities using pre-defined .CSV files. You can view products that are out-of-stock, low-stock, or overstocked on the extension’s dashboard, which provides a clear overview of your inventory status.
Moreover, you can customize stock colors for different stock statuses and overstock quantities, making it easy to differentiate between them. By providing a detailed and user-friendly stock management system, the WooCommerce Product Stock Manager extension helps you keep your inventory organized and up-to-date.
Key Features:
- Manage stock in a detailed list view of products
- View an informative stock dashboard
- Sort products by multiple attributes
- Set and customize stock status
- Manage taxation and shipping on products
- View a detailed stock log
- Import or export stock data in .CSV format
Price:
- $4.08/month
- $49/annually
Download:
- 4K+ Downloads
- 4.67 Rating
Technical Compatibility:
- WordPress Version Required: 4.0.0 or Higher
- WooCommerce Version Required: 3.5.0 or Higher
5. WooCommerce Attribute Stock Management
WooCommerce Attribute Stock Management extension allows merchants to share and manage total inventory based on product attributes which helps to prevent issues like overselling and understating stock levels. The extension lets you manage variable products globally, and control shared variation stock at the product level for efficient stock distribution and accurate inventory management.
With this extension, merchants can also add a stock multiplier to shared inventory groups. Detailed stock reports help merchants keep track of inventory in real time, offering insights into low-stock, most-stock, and out-of-stock variations.
Additionally, WooCommerce Attribute Stock Management allows you to set low stock thresholds and display custom messages when these thresholds are triggered. This extension helps merchants maintain accurate and efficient inventory control.
Key Features:
- Manage stock at attribute and variation levels
- Create multiple attribute shared inventory rules
- Manage attribute stock at the product level and global level
- Import and export attribute stock data in CSV format
Price:
- $4.08/month
- $49/annually
Download:
- 1K+ Downloads
- 4.67 Rating
Technical Compatibility:
- WordPress Version Required: 4.0.0 or Higher
- WooCommerce Version Required: 3.5.0 or Higher
6. WooCommerce Reserve Stock on Add to Cart
WooCommerce Reserve Stock on Add to Cart extension simplifies stock management for merchants by allowing the stock quantity to be reserved as soon as a product is added to the cart. Choose to reserve stock for all products or specific items. The reservation time can be set in hours or minutes, and a time message on the cart page will automatically update. Products will be removed from the cart once the reservation time has expired.
Additionally, the WooCommerce Reserve Stock extension allows for reservation settings to be applied to specific products and categories. Merchants can also tailor reservations based on user roles, such as guest, customer, or shop manager, displaying different stock reservation messages for each role.
Key Features:
- Allow customers to reserve a product in their cart for a specific time period
- Show custom stock messages on reserved products
- Restrict usage by products, categories, and user roles
- Customize the product reservation period
Price:
- $6.58/month
- $79/annually
Download:
- 5K+ Downloads
- 5 Rating
Technical Compatibility:
- WordPress Version Required: 4.0.0 or Higher
- WooCommerce Version Required: 3.5.0 or Higher
Benefits of Using WooCommerce Inventory Management Plugin
Using a WooCommerce inventory management plugin offers several key advantages for store owners.
Save Time on Repetitive Tasks
Edit in bulk and save hours by making changes to thousands of products at once. Easily update prices, variations, and discounts with just a few clicks, thereby eliminating repetitive tasks.
Enhance Customer Shopping Experience
Provide customers with visibility of product stock status to help them make informed purchasing decisions and reduce the need to contact you for updates.
Minimize Losses from Inventory Errors
Reduce the risk of costly mistakes that come with manual inventory management. Ensure accurate stock levels and avoid time-consuming corrections.
Forecast and Manage Inventory Needs
Accurately predict stock levels and know when to reorder from vendors. Stay ahead of inventory challenges with better forecasting and regulation.
Start Managing Today!
Choosing the right inventory management extension can make a significant difference in how smoothly your WooCommerce store operates. With the right tools, you can streamline stock management, reduce errors, and improve customer satisfaction. The six extensions we’ve covered offer various features and pricing options. By integrating these powerful tools, you’ll be well on your way to optimizing your ecommerce operations and achieving greater success.
FAQs
Q1. Why should I use an inventory management extension for my WooCommerce store?
Ans. Using an inventory management extension saves time, reduces errors, provides better stock visibility for customers, and helps you make data-driven decisions about restocking and discontinuing products.
Q2. Can inventory management extensions automate stock updates?
Ans. Yes, many inventory management extensions automate stock updates in real-time to help you maintain accurate inventory records and reduce the risk of manual errors.
