Finale Inventory Reviews

Finally, An Inventory Management Solution That Does Just That, Really Well

Comments: After months of testing and trialing every inventory management software and system on the market, Finale has been such a blessing! From the very first day of signing up, the Finale owner and team have been extremely helpful and responsive to any and every one of our questions or concerns. The interface, layout and organization of the Finale app is extremely user-friendly and does not distract the user with unnecessary formats, colors, layouts and displays. We love the minimalist approach. Everything you need and nothing you don't. The search feature is so optimal and incomparably easy to use within every view option. Your search results are instant and appear immediately as you start typing. Finale has the best import tool we have ever seen. You simply copy cells from excel and paste them into the web browser. Finale takes care of the rest. This truly intuitive copy/paste import feature makes saving, importing and editing your catalog via excel spreadsheets a thing of the past. Generating purchase and sales orders were a real pain-point with previous trial services. PO generating in Finale is intuitive and automatic enough so that anyone on our team could go in and place orders with the suppliers stored in the system. You can also create custom fields, which we use for internal communication to streamline our operations. If you use Ship Station (in our opinion the best shipping management software), this is where Finale’s strength is. It flawlessly sync’s with Ship Station ensuring that you only ship products that are in stock and order out-of-stock items. Finale gives you the things you want in an inventory management software without all the fluff. We tried other solutions that tried to be an all-in-one solution, but they all end up being mediocre services. Finale does one thing really well and that’s inventory management. Regular updates of the software leave our team comfortable knowing that as a system, Finale is always pushing for optimal streamlined cutting edge performance and integrations. We are elated to be using Finale and already have accounts for both of our companies.

Pros:

Cloud based, unlimited users, copy and paste import and edit features, easy stock take, integration with ShipStation with regular attention and upgrades. Strongest search feature we’ve seen. Slick interface and automatic purchase order generation.

Finale has improved everything in our company

Comments: Finale was introduced to our company after a long, tedious process of finding and then trying to implement another IMS (Fishbowl). I was skeptical of the great reviews and claims from other users since I had really been put through the wringer by another company during implementation. After going through a demo and poking around a bit, I was sold. Importing all of the data was a breeze, the user interface is intuitive and for me, the best part is that if I did hit a snag, I could be on a screen share with a Finale rep in no time and they would patiently walk me through it. I'm not exaggerating when I say Finale made everything better. It has transformed the way we do business by allowing us to manage our inventory accurately across multiple sales channels and provide a better experience for our customers.

Pros:

Finale implementation is quick and pretty simple. We use it with ShipStation and the learning curve was practically non-existent because it's so intuitive. Importing data is just a matter of copying and pasting a spreadsheet into their import tool. This makes adding and updating products/customers/vendors/etc. a breeze. I also generate invoices from Finale. We have pretty long production lead times on the majority of our products so predicting stock outs is very important to us and we can trust Finale to calculate that information correctly. The basic reporting is good but the ability to customize existing reports or create your own is excellent. Most importantly, their level of customer service is absolutely top notch.

Cons:

We did have some hiccups with marketplace integrations but we able to work with Finale to create workarounds that have been fine.

Great Service!

Comments: We work closely with [sensitive content hidden] at Finale, who always goes above and beyond to work through any questions we have, even coming up with creative solutions when necessary. The support truly outshines the software!

Pros:

Customer support is great! Shaquille has helped us make this software meet all of our needs!

Cons:

When I first began using the product, I thought there were many shortcomings, but we have worked through the majority of that! I do miss a couple of the legacy reports, specifically the Pull Sheet, since the update, but this is not a big deal.

Is slower than God

Pros:

Was pretty easy to use, although cumbersome with all the screens you have to use to add on product, cannot add inventory from the item page, so quite a few unnecessary clicks there. Also goes into negative inventory which for us means when there is an error we have to manually reset items to zero, would be nice if there was an option to just have inventory go to 0. Also be nice if it has a seasonality feature for ordering, like we need more of this widget for winter etc.

Cons:

It stalls out constantly, no matter the browser no matter the computer, especially on weekends basically unusable, and by the time email support gets back to you it is better again, but they never admit an issue or offer a fix or apology.

A bright shining spot in the morass of crappy SaaS

Comments: Really good. Been with them for many years.

Pros:

It is the most critical system we have in managing our ecommerce business. It integrates with our shipping software and websites and completely manages our inventory. Support is top notch in a time when very few companies put much effort into support. Also, pricing is fair.

Cons:

It would be nice if the PDAs were syncing in real-time rather than requiring batching. This can cause some unusual results at times.

A Hidden Gem

Comments: Since its inception into our business, Finale was incredibly easy to use, simple and straightforward. With an excellent support team and support documentation, we were set up in less than a single day. After that we barely had to get in touch with support, as the self administering factor of Finale is what makes it so great.

Pros:

Finale is incredibly easy to use and provided our company the ability to scale up by using additional features of the product over time. Our inventory is always spot-on as the integrations with various merchants and other software is excellent.

Cons:

The only issue we hold with Finale is their lack of support for iOS and iOS browsers. One could easily integrate the standard browser interface into Finale with some changes and allow those who have an iOS or Mac-based environment be able to use their existing hardware with off-the-shelf scanners.

Alternatives Considered: SkuVault

Reasons for Choosing Finale Inventory: We needed a platform that would handle packs or kits, while keeping our standard inventory up to date.

Switched From: ShipStation

Reasons for Switching to Finale Inventory: Finale has everything, value in cost, access to multiple platforms and marketplaces, customization and kitting/bundling.

Have multiple sales channels? Finale works!

Comments: Overall I have to say one of the most impressive experiences with Finale is its people. It's a small group of people who work personally to help you get set up and learn the system. They know their stuff, are professional and friendly. It really is like they are a part of your own team. Their customer service is fantastic, they respond quickly and can get you moving in the right direction right away. You get the feeling that they want to help you be successful.

Pros:

The software is impressive because it works. Our previous inventory management software would have "glitches" sometimes it didn't sync our five sales channels so we were constantly experiencing inventory issues. That stopped with Finale and our numbers have been spot on since. One thing that makes Finale a winning choice for us is that it integrates with Square which we use for POS in our brick and mortar store. Finale keeps our store, website and internet marketplaces inventory synced in near real time.

Cons:

I have to force myself to come up with things I don't like about Finale. But if I could have a wish list, I would like it to automatically sync new products every few minutes like it does with inventory rather than nightly. Although, you can manually initiate the sync. A little more automation with sales channel associations and expected product cost would be nice too.

Finale Is Great

Comments: I have to say the people at Finale are wonderful to deal with. We have had to have numerous calls and they are always so helpful.

Pros:

We have a lot of product assembly kit items and finale allows you to create those and have the pieces taken out of inventory when the kit is sold. It is hard to find a good kitting inventory software.

Cons:

We had to convert our cases to pieces to make this software work with the multiple locations. It is very hard for us to get use to this.

Alternatives Considered: Cin7 Omni

Reasons for Choosing Finale Inventory: Inflow was not able to communicate with the multiple selling channels.

Switched From: inFlow Inventory

Reasons for Switching to Finale Inventory: Mainly because they could do it all and were cheaper than Cin7. They are United States based so that for us was a big plus too as we wanted to be able to contact someone during business hours should we have a problem.

Hairbrella x Finale

Comments: I've had an awesome experience with Finale so far. We plan to grow and they assured us they'd grow with us.

Pros:

The setup process was very straight forward. Setting up your inventory system can be very tedious but it's very important that it is done correctly. Finale can be fully customized for any type of business.

Cons:

I wouldn't change anything at all. Finale can be pretty complex to a new user so I would suggest teaming up with support. They're very friendly and can help you become a Finale pro in no time.

Alternatives Considered: Extensiv Order Manager and SkuVault

Reasons for Switching to Finale Inventory: The reviews were amazing and the onboarding team sealed the deal with their excellent customer service. They went over and beyond to make sure we had everything we needed to succeed.

Great product, but more importantly, great leadership!

Pros:

The software works exactly how it was intended to! Working with Finale leadership to setup our customization was a breeze! Great product and a great team!

Cons:

I have nothing negative to share about this product! Love Finale!

Superb service, perfect for our needs, easy to use

Pros:

We are part of a university research lab group that uses Finale to track supplies of biospecimen collection kits (builds) and lab supplies. The ability to create builds (to track individual components) for our kits is wonderful! Also, the ability to track lot identifiers and expiration dates is critical for lab reagents and things like blood collection vials. Having Finale Inventory has really helped as our group as we have grown. It's very easy to use and their are still numerous features that we haven't fully explored. Pricing is very reasonable as well. The customer service is FANTASTIC! Chinh (Co-founder, Finale Inventory) has always been very accessible and replies promptly. He's spent extra time walking through problems with us over the phone. This company really goes out of their way to make sure their customers are happy. I can't stress that enough. We have used Finale since late 2014 and are currently in the process to expand our use of it. We are very pleased with both the software and the tremendous customer service and user support.

Cons:

Overall, we are extremely happy with the software. Sometimes our inventory numbers get off due to user error, especially when our builds change (which is not often). So we don't suggest relying solely on re-order thresholds. This is a problem more with our workflow than the software, but it would be nice if there were some kind of mechanism to assist with build changes and inventory audits (though there are great report features and barcode tracking is an option). We have discussed upgrading to use the barcode tracking (which would probably help alleviate this problem for us), but have not made that commitment. The ability to control user permissions and access (like completely separating inventory) is also a little limited, but we haven't really had problems from this. Finale does allow you to assign inventory to different custom locations, but we did decide to get a second account to fully separate our inventory tracking between two groups that never share inventory. On the other hand, being able to share inventory and easily move items from one location to another is also a great benefit.

The best recommendation for a warehouse management system we've ever gotten!

Pros:

I have been using Finale for over Six months now and it really has been one of the better decisions that we have made moving forward with a warehouse management system. It was recommended to us by mutual friends. We came from using Skubana and there were so many things that just didn't work nor met our expectations about a WMS. We had to change a lot of our natural workflow to adapt to Skubana limitations and even then, it was a struggle. When we first considered changing our system to Finale we were very sceptical since we had already committed so much to Skubana. We thought we would need to start back at square one and the entire gruesome process would start again. That wasn't the case at all, the switch over to Finale was not even a days' worth of work. It was so easy to set everything up that we were operating at 80% in the first 3 hours. One of the most notable things about Finale is that we were able to address every single problem that our previous WMS could not. Some examples were Dynamic Purchase Order Integration, Location Auditing, System Search functions (Searched the entire database for items rather than just what is categorized under a supplier), and the ability to push fake qty and live qty for the same item for different listings on the same store. Finale works on having the system work, while some other WMS (Skubana) work on making their systems look good. I look forward to seeing Finale grow more and more!

Cons:

Nothing really, so far Finale has been really great. I have already been recommending Finale to a lot my other eCommerce friends that work in similar workflows that we do.

Finale can tackle the challenges facing eCommerce Businesses with an ease that I cannot believe.

Comments: Honestly, we have seen a 100% or more efficiency increase in daily operations since taking on Finale.
Every aspect of our eCommerce business was improved by the implementation of this software. I would recommend it to anyone needing a solution for warehouse management, regardless of their stance in the eCommerce world. The pure inventory capabilities of this software are exemplary.
We have been able to improve our receiving, order accounting, inventory maintenance, returns, shipments; literally EVERY aspect of our business was improved by the acquisition of this software.

Pros:

Many eCommerce businesses face challenges from many different aspects of the sales/inventory flow; here at Bapmic Auto Parts Inc., we were no exception. As a large company with channels in eBay, Amazon, WalMart, and local sales, we desperately needed a ROBUST and COHERENT warehouse/sales management system. After deciding that a cloud based software was the way to go, I proceeded to test a multitude of TOP ERP/Warehouse Management software(s). These ranged from Odoo, SKUVault, ERPNext, and the like, to more advanced solutions like SAS, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, and so on. I was surprised in my research to find very few comprehensive solutions that would supply us with all the tools needed to unify our operations. Then, I stumbled upon Finale...needless to say, I was extremely, and pleasantly surprised. Finale's ability to leverage ShipStation for inventory and order recording is second to none. The ease of setup, operation, and customization is a refreshing change in the world of open source, cumbersome solutions, versus overpriced, over-complicated systems. Custom Integrations? Endless. Multiple warehouses? No problem. Multiple BINS? Done. Suppliers, purchasing, re-ordering? Done, done, and done. Sales, customers, advanced reporting, accounting charts, and inventory history? Yep, it's covered. Receiving? Of course, even with Expiration Dates or LOT ID's. Can it barcode?? Yes sir. Support? Top Notch. Take the Free Trail, you will NOT be disappointed.

Finale is the best SMB inventory, orders and returns management system on available on the market!

Comments: We've been searching the right system to take our company to the next level, lowering working hours and human errors in managing our inventory, sales and especially returns.
We've been checking 13 different cloud based software solutions and were mainly interested in 3 features:
1. Manage and sync inventory between our online platforms, Amazon and Magento and offline wholesale orders - so there will be no sells for out of stock items.
2. Manage and sync orders between our online based platforms, shipping platform, ShipStation and our accounting software, QBO - so we won't have to retype those fields to create invoices and payments and prevent human errors in this important area.
3. Manage returns - simply as that! I can't believe that an item based business (not a service based) doesn't manage it's returned orders same as it's outgoing orders.
Too much to ask?
So first, apparently, very few of the 13 platforms we checked have a returns management system. Some is still in development and most of them don't even have it.
Finale has a simple Sale Return feature that does just that in a very smart manner.
Second, most platforms sync automatically with QBO, with rules that are hard coded in their software. This has created a big mess in our QBO account, creating new customers, orders on a different serial number and duplicate items.
Finale has a manual sync with QBO that shows you exactly what is going to be synced and you can configure it to work as you wish.
Last and not least, many of the platforms had lots of connection problems with Magento, in addition to miss information when syncing to ShipStation like the shipping method, weight of the package etc.
Finale integration works great! all the order information comes right to ShipStation and then to Finale to sync inventory to the other marketplaces almost instantly.
Finale has a simple look and interface which may look old fashion comparing the new fancy looks but you should know to "not judge a book buy it's cover"!.
Finale works fast. really fast! importing new information, sync orders and inventory and many more.
It has many options that helps you configure Finale to work for you and not the opposite.
They offer quick way to import information, use a barcode scanner and many different kinds of reports.
They have a dedicated team that it is a pleasure to contact in any case or problem, and any software have some.
We hope Finale will keep grow and improve and wish them all the best!

Wouldn't be here without it

Pros:

We purchased Finale Inventory within the first few weeks of starting our business in 2016, back when $149 was an insane amount of money to be spending on software each month and we could barely afford it. It was one of the best decisions we made. Not only do we have historic data going back to the beginning of our business, Finale has allowed us to grow and scale in a way we never could have without it. Our catalog started with a few component entries and has grown to hundreds of SKUs in a short couple of years. We never could have managed this growth in a sustainable manner without the important inventory tracking capabilities that Finale provides.

Cons:

Velocity tracking of build orders and material usage similar to how components are tracked from sales orders.

Finale Completely Changed Our Business

Pros:

Honestly, I love everything about Finale. Before we started using the software, we were using Google sheets to keep track of all of our inventory. To say that getting Finale was life changing is an understatement. It made sending POs and keeping track of inventory so much easier and faster and was pivotal in helping us grow our business. Not only that, the customer support is out of this world. Anytime I have a question (which is pretty often), the team responds extremely quickly and is always willing to hop on a call to help me with whatever I need. I couldn't recommend this software more.

Cons:

There are a few features and reports that we looked for that Finale didn't have, but nothing that has really made that much of an impact.

I use Finale daily to track the inventory flow in and out of our warehouse.

Comments: The biggest benefit that we get from Finale is the ability to track the purchases and sales coming in and out of our warehouse.

Pros:

I like that we can sync up Finale with ShipStation to track our orders and warehouse quantities. I like that we can sync multiple Product Lookups to one Product ID.

Cons:

I dislike that we can't delete Product Lookups from a Product ID once it's been created. Sometimes a product lookup will change (for a example when a part number is discontinued and replaced with a new part number), but because Finale doesn't let you remove a Product Lookup from a Product ID we will sometimes have quantity associated to a no longer valid Product Lookup.

Finale is One of The Best Business Decisions We Made Last Year

Comments: We love the simplicity and efficiency of the program. It looks clean, is easy to navigate and is completely intuitive and easy to use, even for beginners. It isn't visually overwhelming and cluttered with too much "stuff", it is super simple yet very powerful. We started out with Finale a little over a year ago after spending several months researching every program on the market, reading reviews and really doing our due diligence before finally zeroing in on Finale. We have not looked back since. Chinh, Chris and Mike are exceptionally attentive to our every need. If ever we have had a question, problem or a suggestion, they are super quick to respond (usually within minutes) and address it immediately. They have a super hands on approach and honestly seem to care about building a quality business by caring about their product and their customers. They have gone above and beyond to integrate Finale to work with various online channels that we sell on. For instance when we started they did not yet have an integration for pushing stock levels to Overstock and we expressed our need for this and within a month they used our Overstock account as the guinea pig for building the integration. They encountered some bumps in the road linking up with Overstock's API and Chris and his team were able to work around them with lightning speed and we have had a seamless Finale to Overstock inventory integration ever since. Finale has truly changed the way we do business and increased our productivity and efficiency 100 times over. I mean we were literally in the dark ages before we started using Finale, we had no digital inventory control, we were updating online marketplace inventory manually every day, it was literally insanity with all the products we have, which is THOUSANDS. We are truly grateful for Finale and to their team and recommend it to anyone.

Wish I'd found Finale years ago

Comments: Syncs inventory across all selling channels to prevent overselling and underselling. Handles kits/bundles with no problem.

Pros:

I've evaluated a few other solutions and for the money, Finale is great. There is a learning curve and it certainly helps if you're good with excel. But once you get things set up it's phenomenal. No more worrying about overselling - it syncs up with all our venues almost in real time. Also - and this can't be stressed enough - no more UNDERselling. We used to leave stock aside as a buffer to prevent overselling. Now we're confident keeping all that we have listed as stock changes (for breakage/miscount/etc) take seconds and are uploaded to all venues within minutes. I wish I'd have found this years ago!

Cons:

The documentation can be a little confusing/incomplete in places but customer service is very responsive. Also, getting it to integrate with OpenCart was a bit of a chore but OpenCart almost always requires a little finagling to get things to work so I'm used to it. The only other thing that I'd like to see is a mobile app for quick inventory changes when we're away from a desktop/laptop. I tried bringing the desktop site up on my android phone and it doesn't work very well.

Finale Inventory- Long Time user

Comments: Very happy with the support, and the way they will develop new features and adjustments based on feedback. They care about you.

Pros:

I have been using Finale for many years for our Pyrotechnics Inventory, Have seen much development and customer service has always been most responsive.

Cons:

Would like more Mac support. Most development and support are done on Windows, would be good if they had someone familiar with the Mac OS and iOS.

Finale Makes Our World Easier

Comments: Our overall experience with Finale has been thumbs up; our facility would not be able to run like a well-oiled machine without this system. Kudos to all!

Pros:

Using Finale makes our daily takes run smoothly, and hiccups are fixed in a timely manner, the troubleshooting team is outstanding.

Cons:

There aren't any known issues with Finale within our team.

Small But Growing Business on Multiple Platforms

Comments: Finale has done great solving the main need we had, that is, a centralized inventory that is synced across multiple selling platforms. They worked with us to be one of the first customers syncing to Amazon.co.uk which was great. There have only been a few selling platforms they do not yet support but we are hoping to come soon. Sometimes the software is a little quirky to use, but for the most part, is pretty stable and you can usually find a good workaround. It is limited in the fact you cannot centralize listings/data and push those out (only inventory stock levels), but for the cost of the product, this was understood. Still love it and plan to continue using it going forward.

Pros:

Centralized inventory synced across multiple sales channels/platforms

Cons:

Sometimes "clunky" or quirky in areas; adding new products a little cumbersome; more sales channels to sync with would be great (Please get Weebly soon!)

Excellent, Very Professional

Pros:

Easy to use, Convenient and always growing to meet your needs. A Family like Customer service that will help you with any questions you might have. I would highly recommend this software to any company handling any type of inventory, from Explosives to Pencils. This software will work for anything and everything and the staff will meet any request you have in a timely manner

Excellent product, wide range of functions, amazing customer support, thanks Chinh!

Comments: Fully managed warehouse & Inventory with easy to understand setup.

Pros:

It's very convenient to use, and has a very wide range of functions and compaitibility. It also allows us to automate pretty much everything involved in our inventory and warehouse.

Cons:

I wouldn't mind a desktop application, and maybe a bit better function with multiple tabs, I find it tends to lag with more than one.

Finale Inventory is Critical for our business

Pros:

It has out of the box integrations with other software we use like Shopify and Shipstation

Cons:

I wish you could export the views that you have creates in the stock view, with whichever filter you have applied.