How scheduling and inventory management software helps your greenhouse business

Many large greenhouse operations use computer software to help manage their production, scheduling and inventory. There are a variety of software options available for purchase, some of which are listed below. While not all packaged software may do everything that your business requires, many of them have a lot of features in common, including the ability to manage production, purchasing, inventory, sales, shipping, accounting and labour.

Software, Company
Plant Partner, Starcom
Grower Vertical, Practical Software Solutions
SBI Software, Small Business Innovations, Inc.
ABECAS Insight, Argos Software
Picas, Innovative Software Solutions
GrowerLive, Innovative Technologies Group, Inc.

For production management, many software technologies can help with schedule planning by allowing the customized entering of specific crop plans. Once you enter the materials needed and time it takes to produce each portion of a crop, the software can generate sowing, transplant and pinching tickler reports based on the date that the crop needs to be saleable or shipped. For purchasing activities, these technologies can often generate material requirement reports that you will need to begin production of a crop so that you can be sure to have all the materials, such as pots, substrate, seeds/cuttings, etc., on hand before production begins.

Sales analysis is usually an integral part of many software technologies. Most allow customer and order entry which can then be used to generate sales analysis reports including detailed sales reports, comparisons from one year to the next, comparisons of expected versus sold and substitution analysis reports. The more sophisticated software generates picking- or pull- lists for shipping activities and may even generate packing and route (logistic) optimization reports. Most software has accounting features that include managing of accounts receivable, accounts payable and the general ledger. These accounting features allow the tracking of costs down to the unit, if desired. Labour tracking is sometimes included with such software and includes employee time and attendance tracking, average hours per week worked, or average time on task. This allows you to predict future labour needs and tells the manager how fast the work is or is not getting done.

There are some other things software can help with too. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is sometimes a feature of purchased software that allows for sharing sales data between you and other businesses. Some software has smartphone or tablet plugins that will allow your employees to access your software and data from any such device. Some have pay-by-scan management and others have the ability to integrate with radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking of a product as it moves through the production and shipping chain.

Click here for more information on how to choose the right software

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