Cin7

Pros

Intuitive process flow.
Nice fit with existing processes.
B2B Platform.
Customer Service.

Cons

No ability to digitally pick items in a warehouse

Pros

Cin7 has allowed us to integrate and resolve most of our order processing, logistics, inventory and accounting functions into one platform. The API integration into Xero is critical for our business. The reporting capabilities are very powerful and can be used to resolve a number of sales, inventory and regulatory reporting requirements. There really isn't any product on the market that rolls all these features into one package.

Cons

The price is very expensive and the learning curve is quite steep. The CRM functions are pretty light and need fleshing out. Of most concern were the surprisingly large number of bugs and errors in the reports. Support has been responsive and fixed most issues we have discovered in a timely fashion, but it has been surprising how many bugs we have identified and had to report. This left us feeling like we were paying to be a beta tester. As time goes on and the product matures, this should become less of an issue and I don't consider it a deal breaker, but Cin7 could really improve in this area.

Pros

- Omnichannel inventory and order management.
- Easy to connect with Shopify, Amazon, ShipStation, etc.
- Ability to handle bill of materials and contract manufacturing.
- Ability to track actual costs, quantities, and locations of products by batch.
- Lower cost and reduced implementation time compared to ERP systems.
- Friendly and responsive sales and onboarding teams.

Cons

Cin7's user interface is not the most aesthetically pleasing or streamlined (somewhat cluttered and clunky compared to our previous inventory and order management software, Stitch Labs), but I'll take the superior functionality and flexibility over form.

Pros

The user interface is easy to understand and straight forward. Charts are pretty. I think the software will be good for a tiny business that only use Cin 7 for all basic functions - inventory, customer management, etc.

Cons

The biggest issue is NO General Ledger supported within the software so their reports are simply adds and minuses so sometimes the formula can gets messed up. We have switched to another software. I had a few major issues with Cin 7 and we were working with Cin 7 and Quickbooks integration:

1. Timing issue with Cin7. I don't know what time settings in Cin7 is but the time stamps are messed up for some orders.

2. Due to the timing issue, their inventory posting timing are super delayed. The customer service told me that the COGS only will be calculated after 24 hours of the order invoiced AND dispatched. This is also partly caused by no general ledger set up. Your COGS report will NOT be accurate if you dispatch and invoiced the order say - 8p.m. on last day of the month. The COGS report may calculate it on the first day of the following month. This is a huge issue for monthly reporting.

3. Integration. I only experienced Cin 7 with Quickbooks and it was a disaster. I was not participated in the implementation process so I don't know who's idea it was to create only one item in Quickbooks and when import data from Cin 7 to QB it only imports the amount of the total sales of line items to Quickbooks and descriptions but no inventory movement and no record of number of qty of products sold. You must rely on Cin7's reports for this part but the reports. This option should never supported by Cin 7 as their reports are not always accurate.

Pros

- Supports B2B and B2C channels well, including integrated sales channels (Shopify, BigCommerce, multiple Amazon marketplaces, etc.), manual order entry, and EDI.
- Accurate inventory management across multiple warehouses and sales channels.
- FIFO inventory and manufacturing cost tracking from raw goods through processing/assembly and finished inventory.
- Supportive, knowledgeable staff to help with scoping, implementation, and rollout.

Cons

- Account manager/implementation reps are attentive and helpful, but when something has to get escalated to Support, they are at times slow to respond and address issues. However, they are thankfully quick if something is urgent and business-critical.
- There are a lot of details to learn how to use the software correctly, and unfortunately there is not a great way to learn these best practices. There are video training resources, but they rarely address the special situations that seem to emerge often in a system that is trying to manage so much complexity. For a business with channel complexity like ours, this means it takes a lot of trial and error to establish best practices in Cin7 and then to get the data flowing correctly between Cin7 and our accounting software (Xero).
- EDI integrations have taken longer than we expected because the support team is backed up.