DEAR Inventory Overview
What is DEAR Inventory?
DEAR Inventory is a cloud-based, inventory and order management application for SMBs which offers a complete back end management solution with purchasing, sales, warehouse management, light manufacturing features as well as shipping, ecommerce and payment gateway integrations.
DEAR Inventory aims to help small to medium business owners take control over inventory and order management while streamlining, automating and simplifying all daily operations.
DEAR has wide applications in various industries by businesses of various sizes. Retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers and ecommerce operators are the broad categories of DEAR Inventory users. Some businesses utilise DEAR for simple inventory management needs while others rely on DEAR to meet compliance requirements imposed by their industry, for example food manufacturers need DEAR for lot traceability and expiry date capabilities.
DEAR Inventory Overview
Pricing
Pricing options
Plans start from as little as $199 USD/month for 5 users
Extra users: $50 USD/month
DEAR Inventory Features
Media
DEAR Inventory Reviews
DEAR Inventory Reviews
The best cloud-based Inventory Management option for SMEs
As a consultant implementing DEAR Inventory for a wide range of SMEs, we have solved an innumerable amount of problems along the way. From Batch tracking, to serial number tracking, integrations with online stores, accounting, shipping, reporting and forecasting, etc, it is all there.
The team at DEAR are generally very quick to respond and offer assistance, and the users are given the power to request and vote on new features to be implemented. The subscription pricing is also at a point where it represents huge value for money.
Dear has significantly helped our company
Our overall experience is positive. It was a little bit of a learning curve, but now that we have it down, I couldn't imagine going back. It helps us stay organized and helps us become more efficient and detailed with our operations.
Poor Experiences
I wish I had control over whether we switched to a new inventory management system, but all I can do is voice my displeasure and hope that change comes. As for anyone looking into it, it seems to me that DEAR has gotten mostly positive reviews. In my experience, I've had almost nothing positive to say about it. I sincerely hope that everyone will put in a little extra money for something more reliable and customer oriented so they, or those that they work with, will not have to deal with the frustrations our warehouse has gone through.
Great Product, Great Price
DEAR does exactly what it says it does, its a no frills solution for a company with basic inventory needs. We moved to DEAR from MS Dynamics NAV due to the fact that Dynamics options were limitless and for a still small but growing business it was too feature heavy and navigating around to get to the parts we needed was tiresome. What I'd really like to see is a stronger roadmap now from Dear to ramp up their features, particularly reporting isn't great, its quite static and you can't build your own, so a report builder would be ideal or an integration with a BI service so that you can build reports elsewhere. Our particular bugbear is trying to track down stock by batch and location, the information is there but its not in the best format. However for the price you can't complain, dear is an easy to use product that serves a wide variety of needs.
Great cloud-based ERP software
It is my first exposure to cloud-based ERP software, DEAR. I am pretty pleased with its performance. Pretty simply to use and easily to understand each module. The tutorial video presentation is really useful which u can easily accessing it by clicking from the main menu. No hassle to go around to find it.
Overall, my management and myself are pleased to spend almost 6 months to switch over from our existing ERP system
Compare overall rating with alternatives
Compare with alternatives
The best cloud-based Inventory Management option for SMEs
Pros
As a cloud integration consultant working with SMEs in Adelaide and interstate to solve inventory management issues by implementing the right software, DEAR has proven again and again to be the leading choice for these businesses and is now our recommended choice as an implementation specialist.
DEAR has the functionality to provide a central solution to any SME looking to sell online or instore across a number of channels, and manage all the inventory in one place.The integration with Xero is top notch and the most robust I've seen of almost any app that connects to Xero.
The integrations to eCommerce channels are consistent in their setup and options and allow a great deal of flexibility. Complementing these integrations are shipping service integrations that allow for a full suite of inter-connected apps with DEAR as the hub.
Cons
If I had a gripe, it would be around some minor inconsistencies within the UI across various parts of the software, as well as some minor inconsistencies with various reports that are available.
Dear has significantly helped our company
Our overall experience is positive. It was a little bit of a learning curve, but now that we have it down, I couldn't imagine going back. It helps us stay organized and helps us become more efficient and detailed with our operations.
Pros
We transferred from Quickbooks to Dear Systems and it has been a great improvement. Our ability to manage inventory is far greater than before with QB. It's simple/easy to use, but also robust and has some very helpful features. We're in the wholesale industry. On the sales side - we love the pick, pack, and ship functions. This allows us to easily provide another level of detail for our customers that we couldn't before. We can enter what we packed on what pallet and then easily print pallet break downs and detailed packing lists. I also like the way you can mass pick, or mass print sales orders. The advance sale option is nice, so you can track back order shipments right on the same screen as the original order.
On the purchase order side, the advance receiving functions let you receive inventory against one PO more than once which is helpful.
We also just started keeping some inventory in another warehouse, so the ability to keep track of that through dear is nice.
Also the B2B portal has been a nice addition to our company as well.
Cons
I think the reporting tab is pretty clunky, that might be what I like least about Dear. They're on the right track, and some of those reports are very helpful. It's just that I have to export them to excel and modify them quite a bit for them to be what I want them to be.
Also I think the "credit purchase order" and "credit sale note" functions are pretty confusing/complicated.
Response from DEAR Systems
Hello Dallas,
Thank you for your valuable feedback. We have done major improvements to the reports section. With the new UI/UX improvement that was rolled out in the beginning of 2020 the usability and functionality of reports has never been easier. We have detailed knowledge base articles for each report and how to use it. You can read more about it by visiting https://support.dearsystems.com/support/solutions/folders/1000217591/. If you have any questions you can contact us at any time on [email protected] & a Customer Success agent will be ready to do a quick demo to help you.
Best Regards,
DEAR Team.
Poor Experiences
I wish I had control over whether we switched to a new inventory management system, but all I can do is voice my displeasure and hope that change comes. As for anyone looking into it, it seems to me that DEAR has gotten mostly positive reviews. In my experience, I've had almost nothing positive to say about it. I sincerely hope that everyone will put in a little extra money for something more reliable and customer oriented so they, or those that they work with, will not have to deal with the frustrations our warehouse has gone through.
Pros
It seems that DEAR is cheaper than other options, and seems to have a wide variety of functionality -- at the very least, it has all the functionality that our company and our warehouse needs.
Cons
This product in particular has been so poor that I dedicated a lot of time to find places to review it. I started using DEAR 4 years ago when I picked up my job at this company. My company was small then, and DEAR had not been in use for very long when I got there.
Speed has always been an issue, but it hasn't become a big issue until recently as we've become more dependent on inventory and getting things done in a timely manner. In addition to being slow, we experience almost daily shutdowns of the site where nothing can be accessed. Usually, these last anywhere from a few minutes to 30 minutes, but the other day it went down for over 2 hours! This was during our shipping time when we are entirely dependent on the system, although it should be noted that we are dependent on it for the majority of the working day anyways. We ended up staying late to compensate -- and it was a Friday.
Support was not any help as they always provide empty reassurance that their 'team is working hard to improve and optimize the servers', and don't provide any kind of real fix. I could accept that if it noticeably improved over the years, but it hasn't. Clearly it's not enough of an issue for them to actually address.
Overall, terrible software service and terrible customer service. If they excel at anything, it's making their website look pretty -- although I have my complaints about poor functionality of the website as well.
TL;DR -- Would not recommend to my worst enemy
Response from DEAR Systems
Hello Cole,
Thank you for your feedback. Over the last year, we have done a lot of change to improve the performance. To name a few; individual database for each customer, code restructuring, optimize the query, offloading some processing to different servers for quick execution and we also have a 24/7 team monitoring the system for any performance issues & addressing them before customers get affected.
One of our Customer Success Managers has been trying to contact you. We want to give you personalized attention to help you resolve any difficulty you may be facing.
Best Regards,
DEAR Team.
Great Product, Great Price
DEAR does exactly what it says it does, its a no frills solution for a company with basic inventory needs. We moved to DEAR from MS Dynamics NAV due to the fact that Dynamics options were limitless and for a still small but growing business it was too feature heavy and navigating around to get to the parts we needed was tiresome. What I'd really like to see is a stronger roadmap now from Dear to ramp up their features, particularly reporting isn't great, its quite static and you can't build your own, so a report builder would be ideal or an integration with a BI service so that you can build reports elsewhere. Our particular bugbear is trying to track down stock by batch and location, the information is there but its not in the best format. However for the price you can't complain, dear is an easy to use product that serves a wide variety of needs.
Pros
Easy to use, value for money, cloud based, integrates with finance package, support is great.
Cons
Reporting functionality needs work, no ios app, light on more advanced features
Great cloud-based ERP software
It is my first exposure to cloud-based ERP software, DEAR. I am pretty pleased with its performance. Pretty simply to use and easily to understand each module. The tutorial video presentation is really useful which u can easily accessing it by clicking from the main menu. No hassle to go around to find it.
Overall, my management and myself are pleased to spend almost 6 months to switch over from our existing ERP system
Pros
User friendly
Good video demonstration on tutorial, easy to understand and follow
excellent aftersales support - swift in response
Cons
No direct module to handle goods replacement and warranty process /RMA portions
Not too user friendly or suitable to be used on project based jobs/ activities
Compare user recommendation rating with alternatives
Compare with alternatives
DEAR Inventory Pricing
DEAR Inventory Pricing
Plans start from as little as $199 USD/month for 5 users
Extra users: $50 USD/month
Plans start from as little as $199 USD/month for 5 users
Extra users: $50 USD/month
Compare value for money rating with alternatives
Compare with alternatives
DEAR Inventory Features
DEAR Inventory Features
Compare features rating with alternatives
Compare with alternatives
Categories
Categories
Additional information for DEAR Inventory
Additional information for DEAR Inventory
Key features of DEAR Inventory
- Account reconciliation
- Accounting integration
- Accounting management
- Actual costing
- Application integration
- Asset management
- Automated billing
- Automated sales
- Automatic adjustments
- B2B integration
- Balance sheet
- Bank reconciliation
- Barcode printing
- Barcode scanning
- Barcode support
- Bill of material analysis
- Billing & invoicing
- Bills of material
- Cost analysis
- Cost analysis, profit summary
- Cost estimating
- Cost tracking
- Credit card integration
- Credit card processing
- Customer database
- Customer discounts, product discounts, volume based discount
- Customer loyalty program
- Customizable categories
- Customizable templates
- Data import
- Data import/export
- Data synchronization
- Discount management
- Downloadable templates
- Drop shipment management
- Electronic payments
- Email integration
- Estimating
- FIFO/FEFO methods
- Financial reporting
- Fulfilment management
- Integration with online sales channels
- Inventory & service-based expense tracking
- Inventory management
- Inventory reports
- Inventory tracking
- Invoice management
- Invoice processing
- Job costing
- Job costing, issue materials to production
- Lot/batch tracking, expiration date, barcodes, serial number
- Manufacturing reports
- Manufacturing, BOM, finished goods
- Multi-channel management
- Multi-country
- Multi-currency
- Multi-location
- Multi-store management
- Multiple catalogs
- Multiple currencies, multiple warehouses
- Multiple pricing tiers, product images
- Multiple user accounts
- Order management
- Order processing
- Order tracking
- POS
- POS integration
- Partial deliveries
- Permission management
- Power management
- Product data management
- Product expiration reports, lot recall reports
- Product reordering
- Production tracking
- Production yield analysis
- Productivity reporting
- Purchase history
- Purchase order management
- Purchasing management
- Purchasing reports
- Purchasing. PO’s, credit notes, stock, return to supplier.
- QuickBooks integration
- Real time data
- Real time monitoring
- Returns management
- Rights management
- Sales by sale representative, products, customers reports
- Sales orders
- Sales quote management
- Sales reporting
- Sales tracking
- Search functionality
- Selling, sales quotes, margin calculation, recurring invoice
- Serial number tracking
- Shipping management
- Status tracking
- Stock adjustments and valuations
- Stock levels. Reorder to stock level, reorder backordered
- Stock management
- Stock on hand, inventory movement
- Summary reports
- Supplier management
- Third party integration
- Transaction history
- Transaction monitoring
- Transfer between warehouses
- eCommerce integration
Benefits
DEAR acts as a central order management system and lets users achieve complete visibility of sales across all channels (retail, wholesale and ecommerce) and track customer orders from quote to fulfilment (pick, pack, shipment) and invoicing.
With inventory being the main asset it is important to know what is in stock, on order, allocated to a customer or running low. In DEAR users can conveniently set automatic stock reorder points, perform stock adjustments and stay on top of all stock movements in their business.
DEAR supports all major ecommerce sale channels, shipment services and POS e.g. Square, Amazon, Fulfilment by Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, Shipstation, Vend, Floship and more.
Our integrations with online stores and shipping platforms help users reach their customers and increase exposure and sales. Users can easily add new platforms to their sales strategy and use DEAR Inventory as a central point for managing all orders, payments and shipment information for multiple sales channels.
Accurately tracking the costs of raw materials, labour and overheads through the production process will help users formulate the right pricing strategy for their products and ensure they are never operating at a loss. In DEAR this can be managed via the Bill of Materials functionality.
Users can easily estimate the cost of manufacturing and availability of raw materials within the Production module. Check the maximum quantity users are able to manufacture along with the relevant costs and automatically order missing components. Auto-assemblies and kits are also available for the management of bundles.
Our Disassembly module lets users break down items into smaller components and takes the pain out of unit conversions.
DEAR Inventory FAQs
DEAR Inventory FAQs
Below are some frequently asked questions for DEAR Inventory.
Q. What type of pricing plans does DEAR Inventory offer?
DEAR Inventory offers the following pricing plans:
Starting from: US$199.00/month
Pricing model: Subscription
Free Trial: Available
Plans start from as little as $199 USD/month for 5 users Extra users: $50 USD/month
Q. What are the main features of DEAR Inventory?
DEAR Inventory offers the following features:
- Account reconciliation
- Accounting integration
- Accounting management
- Actual costing
- Application integration
- Asset management
- Automated billing
- Automated sales
- Automatic adjustments
- B2B integration
- Balance sheet
- Bank reconciliation
- Barcode printing
- Barcode scanning
- Barcode support
- Bill of material analysis
- Billing & invoicing
- Bills of material
- Cost analysis
- Cost analysis, profit summary
- Cost estimating
- Cost tracking
- Credit card integration
- Credit card processing
- Customer database
- Customer discounts, product discounts, volume based discount
- Customer loyalty program
- Customizable categories
- Customizable templates
- Data import
- Data import/export
- Data synchronization
- Discount management
- Downloadable templates
- Drop shipment management
- Electronic payments
- Email integration
- Estimating
- FIFO/FEFO methods
- Financial reporting
- Fulfilment management
- Integration with online sales channels
- Inventory & service-based expense tracking
- Inventory management
- Inventory reports
- Inventory tracking
- Invoice management
- Invoice processing
- Job costing
- Job costing, issue materials to production
- Lot/batch tracking, expiration date, barcodes, serial number
- Manufacturing reports
- Manufacturing, BOM, finished goods
- Multi-channel management
- Multi-country
- Multi-currency
- Multi-location
- Multi-store management
- Multiple catalogs
- Multiple currencies, multiple warehouses
- Multiple pricing tiers, product images
- Multiple user accounts
- Order management
- Order processing
- Order tracking
- POS
- POS integration
- Partial deliveries
- Permission management
- Power management
- Product data management
- Product expiration reports, lot recall reports
- Product reordering
- Production tracking
- Production yield analysis
- Productivity reporting
- Purchase history
- Purchase order management
- Purchasing management
- Purchasing reports
- Purchasing. PO’s, credit notes, stock, return to supplier.
- QuickBooks integration
- Real time data
- Real time monitoring
- Returns management
- Rights management
- Sales by sale representative, products, customers reports
- Sales orders
- Sales quote management
- Sales reporting
- Sales tracking
- Search functionality
- Selling, sales quotes, margin calculation, recurring invoice
- Serial number tracking
- Shipping management
- Status tracking
- Stock adjustments and valuations
- Stock levels. Reorder to stock level, reorder backordered
- Stock management
- Stock on hand, inventory movement
- Summary reports
- Supplier management
- Third party integration
- Transaction history
- Transaction monitoring
- Transfer between warehouses
- eCommerce integration
Q. Who are the typical users of DEAR Inventory?
DEAR Inventory has the following typical customers:
Small Business, Large Enterprises, Public Administrations, Non Profit, Freelancers, Mid Size Business
Q. What languages does DEAR Inventory support?
DEAR Inventory supports the following languages:
Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), English
Q. What type of pricing plans does DEAR Inventory offer?
DEAR Inventory has the following pricing plans:
Subscription
Q. Does DEAR Inventory support mobile devices?
DEAR Inventory supports the following devices:
Android, iPhone, iPad
Q. What other apps does DEAR Inventory integrate with?
DEAR Inventory integrates with the following applications:
Crossfire, Handshake, Hike, Pepperi, QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online Advanced, Salpo CRM, Starshipit, XLReporting, Xero
Q. What level of support does DEAR Inventory offer?
DEAR Inventory offers the following support options:
FAQs, Knowledge Base, Online Support, Video Tutorials, Phone Support
As a consultant implementing DEAR Inventory for a wide range of SMEs, we have solved an innumerable amount of problems along the way. From Batch tracking, to serial number tracking, integrations with online stores, accounting, shipping, reporting and forecasting, etc, it is all there.
The team at DEAR are generally very quick to respond and offer assistance, and the users are given the power to request and vote on new features to be implemented. The subscription pricing is also at a point where it represents huge value for money.