Once upon a time… warehouse inventory spreadsheets seemed like a good first step for setting up your warehouse. But as your business grew—bringing in more customers, inventory, and staff—the increasing complexity and rate of errors made it easy to outgrow your warehouse inventory management spreadsheet.

“We used to run the whole business on spreadsheets, and as the business grew so did the complexity of the spreadsheets,” - David Raddon, National Operations Manager of Parton Wine Distribution.

“We were picking orders directly off customer invoices and, as you can imagine, the error rate was higher than we would have liked.”

This situation is all too common for many 3PL warehouses today — limiting growth potential and scalability. Opening up growth potential and new revenue options is why growing warehouses use a cloud-based WMS like CartonCloud.

By automating manual tasks like data entry, a cloud-based WMS can improve accuracy, accommodate unique customer requirements, and free up your team to focus on what truly matters — driving your business forward.

We take a look at three real 3PL warehouses who outgrew their warehouse inventory management spreadsheets, made the switch to a cloud-based WMS, and never looked back. 

Overcoming the limitations of warehouse inventory spreadsheets

Let’s talk time and accuracy. Using warehouse inventory spreadsheets to manage your warehouse often means spending countless hours on tedious manual tasks like data entry and admin work. 

Manually updating the status of each SKU while juggling multiple warehouse inventory Excel spreadsheets makes it all too easy to lose track and leave room for errors.

Take TNS Logistics for example, a 3PL warehouse who was using warehouse inventory Excel spreadsheets until their first e-commerce customer arrived with over 600 SKUs. 

Suddenly, they found themselves outgrowing warehouse inventory spreadsheets and in need of a more powerful solution — one that could provide real-time visibility into incoming orders and outgoing consignments, tracking, capturing charges automatically, and offering full transparency to their customers.

 Now, CartonCloud’s WMS empowers TNS to:

• Manage their entire warehouse process from receiving incoming stock to allocating storage, tracking stock movements, handling, picking and packing orders, and dispatch.
• Apply customizable rate cards for different clients.
• Automatically generate invoices.
• Save time, boost accuracy, and grow their business their way. 

With their cloud-based, automated WMS solution, TNS have now scaled their business – managing global customers and thousands of SKUs while maintaining accuracy in their operations.

Switching to CartonCloud is easy

The thought of transitioning over to a new system can feel overwhelming – not only do you have to import all of your current data, but you also need to get your team up to speed with the system quickly. But with CartonCloud, switching to a WMS is made easy and fast! 

Our expert local support team is here to help you at every step. With an average onboarding time of just 6 hours, you can get up and running straight away.

Train your team in minutes with our CartonCloud Academy – an online training portal with easy video tutorials and courses, designed to help you master your system.

As your team grows, it’s crucial to have a system that is intuitive and easy for new members to learn. Switching to a WMS provides the flexibility to expand, ensuring that vital operational knowledge isn’t limited to just a few experienced employees — anyone can quickly get up to speed.

“It's simple, I think for anyone to come on board with us now to learn our system, to be able to teach a new driver, a new warehouse person, our system through CartonCloud, they'll download their app, they'll use it. It's very intuitive and user friendly and it makes our jobs a breeze.” - Kierden Buchanan, Delivery Specialist, Drink Distribution.

Automation and visibility for you, and your customers

Your customers are essential to your business’s growth, and meeting their needs means automating your operations and ensuring clear visibility. Even if your customers still rely on warehouse inventory spreadsheets, upgrading to a WMS allows both your team and your customers to transition seamlessly to the Cloud.

With CartonCloud, you can easily automate data from clients’ warehouse inventory spreadsheet Excel or PDF attachments via EDI and API, saving countless hours of manual work. How? Customers can simply email their Excel spreadsheet to a designated address, and CartonCloud takes care of the rest, saving you an average of 8 hours per week by automating order details.

Take Holloway Removals and Storage for example. They were managing 4,000 pallets using an Excel spreadsheet for warehouse inventory, with two full-time staff spending days on administrative tasks. 

Realizing they had outgrown using an Excel spreadsheet for warehouse inventory, they turned to CartonCloud for enhanced automation and increased visibility capabilities so they could meet customer demands efficiently and continue to support their growth.

They needed a way to provide their customers with greater transparency and CartonCloud’s secure customer portal was the key! Now, their customers can log in, manage orders, and gain real-time insight into their stock levels, movements, and updates.

Having access to both real-time and historical data in one place is key to unlocking growth, allowing Holloway to use data for informed decisions and growth planning. 

Let's dive into how CartonCloud captures all types of data in real-time.

Dynamic, real-time data with a cloud-based WMS

Accuracy should never be a compromise, but when you’re relying on a warehouse inventory spreadsheet Excel doc for tracking, it often is. 

With CartonCloud, capturing inventory levels and stock movement data is simple, with stock and historic stock reports. As your team scans stock on the warehouse floor for picking or relocation, the system instantly updates stock reports and records all associated charges.

Additionally, if you need to review how your stock levels have changed over a specific period, you can run a historic stock report, giving you a clear snapshot of your inventory at any point in time.

Switching from a warehouse inventory spreadsheet to a WMS also allows you to track additional data, such as stock expiry, stock damage, serial numbers, handling fees, and the full history of orders and stock movements – all within your WMS inventory records. All you have to do is scan a pallet barcode and all associated information will pop-up on your CartonCloud mobile app. 

Want to know more?

Making the switch from warehouse inventory spreadsheets to CartonCloud’s WMS is simple! Contact our friendly team to schedule your FREE demo and see our software in action.