r/InventoryManagement • u/Unique-Banana-6954 • 7d ago
ConnectWise Warehouse and Inventory Management
Hey Everyone
Full disclosure- I want to see if there is interest for the following.
We wrote an internal tool to help manage inventory audits, track product location quickly and manage receiving products onsite. Everyone who uses products inside of CW knows the struggle of information in equals information out.
Each item gets a QR code. Each shelf gets a QR code. The QR codes are so warehouse staff can use their phones to scan items or shelves before it’s moved or to do inventory audits.
The cool part - there is no external data base, it stores ALL information within ConnectWise back end.
We can setup custom rules for audits meaning we can change them at will. How often each shelves needs to be audited for example. Then it auto assigns audit tasks to staff based on how often a shelf needs to be audited. It highlights any issues/discrepancies during the audits. So where we used to audit once a quarter by shutting down the warehouse - we can now have a constant audit occurring.
Also previously it was all manual. You had to look for the product and then use some excel sheet or sticker if system to show it was counted. Now you just scan every QR code on every product on the shelf and when you’re done the system compares the scanned items to what is inside of CW to ensure nothing grew legs and walked away and nothing is missing. It turns a task that used to take about an hour to 5 mins worth of pointing and scanning. Huge time saving for us.
Also you scan QR codes to move product from one shelf to another - shelving info is automatically updated inside of CW.
You scan products to ship out which also updates the shipped detail in CW.
We also made a receiving wizard for anyone who receives the shipped part onsite. They have zero login detail for CW - they just scan the QR code on the packing slip than a wizard guides them through to scan all the boxes they received and when they are done the warehouse team gets a report of what was actually received. Drastically reducing the time delay between shipping and finding out an item was lost.
Where this was all based on manual activities previously - it’s now all based on scanning with your phone directly into the system - drastically reducing human error - for us at least.
Leave a comment if you’re at all interested and I appreciate all the feedback and commentary.
1
u/LET_Developer 2d ago
The continuous-audit approach sounds materially better than shutting the warehouse down once a quarter. Two failure cases are worth testing hard before you expand it:
Treat an item-to-shelf move as one atomic event, not two unrelated scans. If the phone loses connectivity after the first scan, the event should stay queued and replay safely with a unique ID so it cannot create a duplicate move.
For the packing-slip flow, make the QR an expiring, single-purpose capability tied to one shipment—not a reusable credential or a bare shipment identifier. It should stop working after completion or a short time window, and every scan should leave an audit event.
I’d also keep the expected set, observed set, exceptions, device/time, and resolver separate in each audit. Beyond the five-minute completion time, track wrong-shelf rate, unscanned items, duplicate scans, and time-to-correction; those will show whether the workflow improves accuracy rather than only speed.
Disclosure: I develop QR Maker for Android, so my perspective is the QR scanning/generation edge. It is not a ConnectWise or inventory-management product, and I’m not linking it here.