2020 TradeGecko Review

TradeGecko enjoys one of the best online reputations when it comes to inventory management software. That’s hardly a surprise, considering TradeGecko users see an average sales revenue increase of 50% after their first year of service.²

But we had to wonder: Is TradeGecko all it’s cracked up to be?

We did a deep dive into TradeGecko’s cloud-based platform to see what the service does well—and what it doesn’t. Here’s what we came up with.

Based on TradeGecko’s offerings, we think it works best for wholesale businesses. With a Small Business plan or higher, you get a customizable B2B e-commerce site, which you can personalize with your brand colors, logo, and custom pricing for each client.

TradeGecko also offers a number of features and tools to simplify your invoicing and client payment process—which allows you to get paid faster and spend less time processing sales orders. Plus, TradeGecko makes order management smooth and easy.

That’s not to say, of course, that TradeGecko won’t work for retail or e-commerce businesses. Far from it—the Founder plan is practically made for single-location retail stores. And the service offers integration with WooCommerce, Amazon, Shopify, and tons of other e-commerce platforms, so you can sell products online with ease.

While TradeGecko offers a ton of useful tools, it’s missing some key features. Once you enter a shipment or batch into your system as part of a pack, you can’t break down that pack into individual units. That’s a big problem if your business sells full packs to wholesalers as well as individual items to retail customers. And unlike competitors like Cin7 and Fishbowl, TradeGecko doesn’t offer a built-in point-of-sale solution.

While TradeGecko’s interface is clean and simple, we found that it has a tendency to get buggy after major updates—especially if those updates don’t sync up with updates to your WooCommerce extensions or any other integrations used in your system. The service also lacks accessibility on the Android platform, as the TradeGecko app is available only on iOS devices.

TradeGecko’s customer service is also pretty spotty if you don’t have a Business plan or higher. That’s not a total deal breaker (especially considering the service’s in-depth online knowledge base), but it may make the platform frustrating to use if you’re not super tech-savvy.

TradeGecko pricing ranges from $39 per month (a steal, in our opinion) to $799 per month. But you should know that these prices are based on an annual payment plan. If you decide to go month-to-month, you can still get the Founder plan for $39 per month, but the Lite, Small Business, and Business plans go up to $99 per month, $249 per month, and $699 per month, respectively.

Meanwhile, the Premium plan allows only an annual subscription.

All of the plans above include a 14-day free trial period, so you’re free to experiment with the platform to make sure it works for your needs.

And on the off chance that you need a plan that supports more sales orders, users, or sales channels than the Premium plan provides, you can get a custom quote for a Pro plan.

TradeGecko has a lot of standard inventory management features—including the ability to list in-depth product information like weight, size, color, barcodes, costs, and expiration dates. You can also view each product’s restock history and consolidate all your business’s sales channels within a single platform (though the exact number of channels allowed depends on your plan).

However, TradeGecko also offers some inventory management features that aren’t so standard.

For instance, the TradeGecko platform supports bundling, kitting, and setting pack sizes. That helps you easily define groups of items that can be sold as one unit. TradeGecko also allows you to use barcode scanners to search your product catalogue or add item info into your sales and purchase orders automatically.

With a Lite plan and above, TradeGecko also offers intense automation, thanks to the TradeGecko Connect feature. TradeGecko Connect can automatically calculate and set up reorder points, order quantities, lead demand metrics, recommended stock covers, and more for each item based on its sales and purchase history. That saves you time, since you don’t have to manually calculate those metrics by hand.

While TradeGecko does offer integration with Shopify and other online marketplaces (like the WooCommerce app), the platform really shines when it comes to its wholesale features.

TradeGecko users can set up a customizable B2B e-commerce website, which allows your wholesale customers to shop your products (and see real-time stock numbers) on their own time. You can also choose featured products and deals to display.

Another wholesale feature we like? TradeGecko’s seamless invoicing system. Once a wholesale client submits an order, it converts to an invoice automatically. The system also inserts invoice payment due dates for you based on the payment terms you specify in advance.

Also included on the invoice is a nifty Pay Now button, which guides the customer through the TradeGecko Payments processor. This helps your clients pay quickly and easily, plus it cuts out the extra time spent on slow-going bank transfers and multiple payment platforms.

Keep in mind, though, that while TradeGecko Payments is included with any TradeGecko plan, it does come with transaction fees. These fees are fairly standard compared to other payment processors, though, so we don’t think that’ll be a deal breaker for most businesses.

TradeGecko makes it easy to manage your sales and purchase orders.

For starters, you can set up custom workflows for different types of orders based on their order value, item quantity, sales channel, and more. At each step of each workflow, you can assign tags, standard shipping costs, invoice details, team member assignments, and trigger emails—that way you can automate things like order confirmation emails, employee reminder emails, and even Slack notifications within your organization.

TradeGecko also offers the ability to create sales orders on the go via the TradeGecko app. So if you’re in a sales meeting or at a trade show, you can easily generate orders for new clients. The app then syncs with your inventory management software, allowing your team to start work on packing and shipping immediately.

TradeGecko also simplifies order fulfillment on backordered products. If you ever oversell a product, the platform will automatically consolidate all the outstanding sales orders for the unavailable item into a single purchase order for the supplier, making it easy to reorder the item and fulfill your customer orders as quickly as possible.

If your business uses multiple warehouses to fulfill orders, TradeGecko can help you simplify your inventory control. Like most other inventory systems that support multiple warehouses, TradeGecko allows you to view stock levels and performance at each location. And you can easily transfer stock between warehouses if one location runs low.

In addition, TradeGecko allows business owners to specify warehouse locations on their purchase orders and sales orders. This allows suppliers to deliver new stock directly to the locations that need it most (rather than going through your central warehouse first) and sales orders can be fulfilled directly from the warehouse that makes the most sense (based on location and stock availability).

Unlike other inventory management software, TradeGecko also lets you transfer stock to consignment locations. And with a Business plan or higher, you can even track the bin numbers of each of your products within each warehouse. That way, you don’t have to worry about misplacing inventory within your warehouse.

If you’re using a third-party software for your accounting, e-commerce selling, shipping, or any other business need, there’s a good chance that TradeGecko offers an integration for it.

Here are just a few of the integrations you can use with your TradeGecko service:

• Accounting: Xero, QuickBooks Online
• E-commerce: Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, eBay
• Electronic data interchange (EDI): SPS Commerce, VL OMNI, B2BGateway, DSCO
• Forecasting: Inventory Planner, Lokad
• Point-of-sale: Shopify POS, Lightspeed
• Manufacturing: Katana
• Marketing: HubSpot, Klaviyo, MailChimp, Integromat
• Marketplaces: Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, Overstock, Wayfair, Joor, The Iconic
• Reporting: Inventory Planner, Lokad, 9Spokes
• Shipping: Fulfillment by Amazon, ShipStation, Shiptheory, Shippit, Easyship, ShipBob
• Third-party logistics (3PL): Fulfillment by Amazon, 3PL Central, Fulfyld, VeraCore
• WMS: CIO Direct, ShipHero, Sphere WMS, Rakuten Super Logistics
• Other: Zapier, Slack, Google Drive, DataBot, CommerceHub, Inventory Source

One thing to bear in mind, though: while some of these integrations were developed (and are currently supported) by TradeGecko directly, many integrations were created by third-party developers—so results aren’t guaranteed.

TradeGecko’s reporting feature gives you a lot of insight into both your inventory and your sales.

Within your TradeGecko dashboard, you can quickly and easily access reporting for your on-hand stock, inventory by location, incoming stock, and historic inventory. These inventory control reports can be filtered by location, product type, and more. On the sales side, you can view historic and current sales order reports, filtered by product, variant, product type, sales channel, customer, sales rep, and location.

This gives you enhanced insight into the state of your business and the success or shortcomings of your current inventory control practices. And the fact that TradeGecko’s reports are so customizable gives the platform a leg up compared to many of its competitors.

Best of all, TradeGecko users with a Business plan or higher can access TradeGecko’s built-in demand forecasting. This feature helps you predict customer demand for each of your products in advance so you never have to worry about stockouts.

TradeGecko support is kind of a mixed bag, if we’re being honest.

On the one hand, the service’s online knowledge base is outstanding. It features e-books, webinars, and handy tutorials that guide you through pretty much every task step by step. So whether you’re trying to add a new product or figure out how to reconcile inventory counts, you can find a walkthrough to help.

TradeGecko also offers great onboarding support. In fact, if you sign up for a Small Business plan or higher, you can get two to eight hours of personal setup assistance from a member of the TradeGecko team.

What’s more, TradeGecko offers 24/7 customer service to all customers. But here’s the catch: it’s 24/7 email support—meaning you can send an email anytime, but you’ll have to wait for the TradeGecko team’s normal office hours to get a response. Since TradeGecko’s headquarters are in Singapore, that means North American users likely won’t get a response to their concerns until the following business day.

Of course, you can get 24/7 phone support and a dedicated account manager—but only if you pay the extra cash for a Premium plan.

TradeGecko’s reporting feature gives you a lot of insight into both your inventory and your sales.

Within your TradeGecko dashboard, you can quickly and easily access reporting for your on-hand stock, inventory by location, incoming stock, and historic inventory. These inventory control reports can be filtered by location, product type, and more. On the sales side, you can view historic and current sales order reports, filtered by product, variant, product type, sales channel, customer, sales rep, and location.

This gives you enhanced insight into the state of your business and the success or shortcomings of your current inventory control practices. And the fact that TradeGecko’s reports are so customizable gives the platform a leg up compared to many of its competitors.

Best of all, TradeGecko users with a Business plan or higher can access TradeGecko’s built-in demand forecasting. This feature helps you predict customer demand for each of your products in advance so you never have to worry about stockouts.

TradeGecko is a cloud-based inventory management solution operated by TradeGecko PTE Ltd. The service allows you to track your inventory in real time, process invoices, fulfill customer orders from multiple sales channels, and more—all within a single platform.

The main difference between wholesale and retail is who you’re selling to. Retailers sell their products directly to their consumers. Meanwhile, wholesalers sell products to other businesses (usually in bulk) that then sell those products to consumers at an inflated cost. While retailers certainly can use TradeGecko, we think the platform is best suited to wholesalers.

We give TradeGecko a 4.4 out of 5 stars, so it’s definitely high on our list. But it doesn’t offer the comprehensive options that some other providers do. Check out our list of the best inventory management software to see our other top picks.

We’re big believers in getting inventory management software if you can. But not every business can—and that’s okay. Tracking your inventory with programs like Excel can be simpler and more cost-efficient.

If you’re leaning toward the DIY route, though, you may want to consider using one of the many free Excel spreadsheet templates available online. TradeGecko even offers a free inventory management template that can automatically sync with your TradeGecko software when you eventually need to upgrade to a software solution.

TradeGecko offers wholesale features that make it difficult to ignore if you’re running a B2B business. The platform is clean and easy to use, so you can streamline your business processes and get stuff done in just a click or two. And with plans starting at only $39 per month, TradeGecko is a great value—even if its updates occasionally cause some bugs and its app isn’t available on Android devices.

See how TradeGecko stacks up to other top providers in our complete guide to the best inventory management software.

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.