Best Order Fulfillment Software of 2021

Want to get your products to your customers faster and more efficiently? If so, getting order fulfillment software like Fishbowl Warehouse, Brightpearl, BizAutomation, ShipBob, or Zoho Inventory could be the best move for your business.

Order fulfillment (or the process of getting your product delivered to your customer post-sale) is vital to maintaining customer satisfaction. Your buyers want their items quickly, after all. But running an operation that fast means monitoring and optimizing your warehouse order management, your supply chain, and your customer communication. Read on to see how our top picks can help.

The first step of order fulfillment efficiency is to streamline your warehousing—and that means keeping everything clear and organized. Fishbowl Warehouse makes that aspect of your order fulfillment easy. In addition to serial number tracking, Fishbowl offers shelf and aisle location tracking. You can even specify the exact location of your merchandise on order picking lists, ensuring your employees can always find products quickly and easily.

Fishbowl also helps you optimize your shipping and supply chain. The platform includes built-in FedEx and UPS integrations, so you can easily generate and print labels, and get real-time shipping rates. Plus, Fishbowl supports multiple shipping addresses, so you can fulfill ecommerce orders even when half the order is going to a different location.

On top of all that, Fishbowl offers traditional inventory tracking and purchase order generation. The platform even includes forecasting, so you can predict seasonal demand for your products and restock accordingly.

Fishbowl Warehouse is an on-premise order management software, though, meaning it stores your inventory data on your device rather than on the cloud. So if your business needs a more mobile option, you may be happier with a cloud-based inventory management solution instead.

ShipBob is different from the other options on our list because it isn’t actually an inventory management platform—it’s an order fulfillment service.

With ShipBob, you pay to store your inventory at one or more ShipBob warehouses around the country. Then, when a sales order comes in, ShipBob will pick, package, and ship your items for you from whatever warehouse is closest to your customer. This allows ShipBob to offer two-day shipping nationwide—which means you get to offer two-day shipping nationwide.

Once the order is shipped, you can view detailed analytics on your sales data, see timelines for every order, and even filter your inventory by order status. Plus, you can share tracking data with your buyers. These features give you everything you need to provide the best possible customer service experience.

The third order fulfillment software on our list is Zoho—and there’s a lot to like.

For starters, Zoho Inventory lets you set up automated workflows so you can get the ball rolling on fulfilling sales orders as soon as they come in. Zoho also lets you see real-time shipping rates, create packing slips, and fulfill partial orders (in the event you’re out of stock on one item in your customer’s order).

Zoho doesn’t quite get our overall pick, though, because the platform just isn’t as robust as other options (like Fishbowl). For instance, the order management system makes returns so difficult you’d almost be better off doing it by hand. You also can’t manage multiple warehouses unless you sign up for a paid plan.

Most importantly, Zoho imposes limits on the number of shipping labels you can print, the number of shipments you can track, and the number of orders you can fulfill each month. And that’s true no matter which plan level you sign up for—whether it’s the free plan or the $200 per month Professional plan, there’s no option for unlimited shipping or orders.

That said, Zoho’s still a great choice if you run a small business that does only a few thousand orders per month.

Brightpearl offers a lot of your standard inventory management features, including the ability to manage multiple warehouses, track inventory movement, and keep tabs on your stock levels. It also keeps your inventory synced across lots of different sales channels. But where the platform really shines is in its automation features.

Brightpearl lets you automate several time-consuming elements of your order fulfillment process. For starters, you can automatically calculate shipping rates and delivery times using data like your customer’s location and the shipment’s size and weight. You can also automate workflows, meaning specific types of orders can automatically trigger certain tasks—like printing pick lists and generating shipping labels.

The fact that you can automate so much makes Brightpearl a great choice for growing businesses, companies with multiple warehouses, and online retailers with lots of sales channels. With so much order fulfillment and warehouse management automation, running a more complex business gets a lot easier.

BizAutomation isn’t just an order fulfillment software—it’s a holistic business solution that can accommodate most (if not all) of your company’s needs. BizAutomation includes a built-in CRM. This helps your company provide even better order fulfillment since you can easily look up customer orders and find out exactly where their shipment is.

Of course, BizAutomation also brings the heat in terms of order fulfillment software. The platform supports shipping through FedEx, UPS, USPS, and tons of other options, so you can easily find the least expensive shipping provider, then generate a shipping label and tracking number for each sales order. BizAutomation also supports batch, wave, and zone picking, which basically means it can help you pick items for multiple orders at once.

BizAutomation also offers a robust warehouse management system that lets you track inventory levels across multiple warehouses. This gives you more flexibility to decide which warehouse to use for fulfillment on each order, so you can choose the warehouse that will get your customer their order the fastest. Considering how inexpensive BizAutomation is (just $79.95 per month per user to start), that’s a pretty impressive set of features.

The order fulfillment process varies from business to business, but usually follows a specific pattern:

1. Your business receives goods.
2. Your business processes customer orders through picking and packing the items in question.
3. Your business ships and delivers the order.
4. Your customers (hopefully) return for future orders.

The key to a successful fulfillment operation is to optimize each step in the order fulfilment process, thereby ensuring your customers receive their orders as quickly as possible.

There are a few things you can do to improve your order fulfillment:

• Ensure order visibility throughout the entire fulfillment process. Making your system as transparent as possible helps you more quickly identify bottlenecks.
• Choose a fast, reliable shipping and logistics partner. If you speed up the supply chain, you can ensure your customer gets their items in less time.
• Invest in your warehouse management. Keeping your warehouses organized helps your employees find products faster, which speeds up the delivery process.
• Integrate all your business services. If your supply chain management, logistics, point-of-sale, inventory, and accounting solutions can all integrate, you can avoid double-entering your data.

Your order fulfillment rate is the number of orders your business processes, divided by the total number of orders. This data point indicates your business’s speed and accuracy, so if you have a low order fulfillment rate it means you’re losing money by failing to ship orders on time. Fortunately, order fulfillment software can help you keep track of everything, so you can focus on growing your business rather than stressing about the current size of your company.

Order fulfillment software helps you keep track of stock levels, it’s true. But it also helps you organize your warehouse and ship your items to the customer faster. For that, we recommend inFlow Inventory, Brightpearl, BizAutomation, ShipBob, and Zoho Inventory. While none of these options are perfect, they can all help you take your company’s order processing to the next level.

For more information on our top inventory management software, our guide can help. Check it out to see which inventory management platforms are best for various types of businesses.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.