New 'In-House Inventory Management Techniques and Trends' survey

Today, Webgility, the leading ecommerce automation solution for QuickBooks customers, released new findings on the top challenges facing ecommerce sellers who manage their own inventory in-house. 

Webgility surveyed 800 online business owners who store their own inventory about how much more time and money they’ve spent on managing inventory compared to what they’ve made, their confidence in their processes, what they’d be doing if they didn’t have to manage their own goods, and more.

Overall, the survey revealed the following:

• 38% of sellers say their top challenges are stock issues like overselling, restocking, overstocking, and supply chain delays.
• Understanding profit and loss is their single greatest challenge.
• 53% of sellers spend between 1 and 10 hours a week on inventory management.
• 15% of sellers would rather spend time understanding profitability and hanging out with friends and family than managing their inventory.
• 35% of sellers have spent more on inventory YOY.
• 19% of sellers keep 500-1,000 pieces of inventory on hand at any given time.
• 12% of sellers don’t do any accounting for their online businesses.

“Inflation and layoffs are driving a greater need for everyday people to start online businesses. Sellers today need to understand the different techniques and get smarter about inventory management strategies. Fortunately, lots of great inventory management solutions can give you some guidance. But this is where analytics becomes critical,” says Webgility CEO and founder Parag Mamnani.

“Surprisingly, these results show that even established ecommerce sellers have a lot to learn about profitability and how to spend less time on tedious tasks and more time on themselves and true business growth. In 2022 alone, sellers lost almost $2 trillion to issues related to mismanaged inventory. So we hope results like this open the door to new conversations about what it takes for all online sellers to achieve long-term success.”

For more highlights and complete survey questions and responses, visit our inventory management statistics infographic.

ABOUT WEBGILITY

Webgility is the No. 1 ecommerce automation solution for QuickBooks customers. Its flexible, powerful software connects QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop to ecommerce stores, marketplaces, and point-of-sale systems.

Webgility makes it easy to sync prices and inventory across stores, access actionable business analytics, adopt new sales channels, find new customers, and sell more. Webgility was founded in 2007 and serves over 5,000 businesses and processes over 100 million transactions annually. All plans include free five-star onboarding and support.