LOCATE

LOCATE really got us out of a jam. Our company is on QBO, and we sell direct to customers, eBay, Amazon, and our website. Our company was using spreadsheets and manually keeping track of inventory. We had over 50 people that needed access to the system, and needed everything from purchasing, quoting, ordering, production, shipping, and more. I like the fact that it is SaaS, and they have integration with all the tools we need. The barcoding on BIN locations and the paperwork it generates has been a godsend. We had a ton of miss-ships, which upset customers and cost us a lot of money. That problem is virtually gone, and it is human error that trips us up now. We now have historical data, margin reports, sales reports, and a ton more that I use *daily* as a CEO. Our team also has a ton of automated, custom reports they receive every morning as well. We are now using data and analytics to help drive our company forward.

I dinged them 1 start on "Features", only because this is software and this is never really "done". They have a lot of clients that do business in a lot of different ways. You are also going to have to change some of your processes as a business to fit into LOCATE (This is true with any software you use for inventory management & order processing). If they are weak anywhere, I would say the accounting expertise that LOCATE provided us may need another person, but that was a year ago we implemented so maybe they did that. At the end of the day, it really isn't their job to help our accounting team, but it is something to ask them when evaluating their product.

Our team got up and running with Locate very quickly, just before Q4 (in other words, a very busy and critical time). It's visually appealing, easy to navigate, and very effective. Love the open API which allows us to connect with the other platforms we use. Locate is continually rolling out improvements and additional capabilities, their customer service is responsive, pleasant and truly helpful. In all these ways, Locate is unlike any other inventory/order management platform we used or looked at. Highly recommend.

While there are a lot of reports, not many apply to us. Locate will build custom reports to your specs - which is great - but we wish there were self-serve options. We'd also love dashboards that gave a macro view of the company's or category's status.

Inventory tracking has been a battle. We need to lot / expiration track all of our products from the moment they enter our warehouse. We can accurately see the steps we take on every order retail & wholesale. Support is always available, we kept them busy for quite a while after implementation.
Updates - I have never been excited to get software updates for a product I manage, normally they are just aesthetics or features that just don't apply to your use. For the few updates we have been apart of we have found many of the changes to be useful. The latest update looks to be directly addressing a request we made for advanced functionality with Shopify.

Implementation was a whirlwind, not that this is not unique to Locate. Quite a bit to absorb in a very short timeframe for everyone involved.