abas Warehouse Management App - 4 Major Benefits

Warehouse management is a key strategic function for any company. You need to know what you have in inventory, where it's located, what’s going out, what’s coming in, and much more. Having this essential inventory-related data in real time is exactly what the abas Warehouse Management app enables, says abas app project lead, Sean Quinn. We spoke with him recently about the main user benefits the Warehouse Management app offers users.

#1 Stock Lookup Functionality

This functionality provides users with real-time visibility into warehouse inventory levels, and where that stock is at any moment, or as Quinn describes it: “Stock lookup allows users to see the real-time levels of the current stock of any products, in any location or any lot.” How could this essential functionality be used? “If you are looking for a specific product,” explains Quinn, “you can have the app tell you all the places where it’s currently in inventory. If you want to know what the current levels of allocation are, you can see everything that’s in that particular location and whether or not something is missing or should be there.” It’s all essential data.

#2 Barcode Scanner Functionality

Inputting barcodes manually is an error-prone, mind-numbing nightmare for warehouse workers. “Having the barcode scanner working with the app is a big way to speed up the process because, if all your material is barcoded, your users can zip right through scanning it instead of having to hand-key all those barcodes,” says Quinn. “It cuts down on errors and speeds up processing time.”

the abas app makes it easy to see everything that’s in a particular location and whether or not something is missing

The app integrates with the native (in-device) camera and with a handful of hardware scanner attachments, which is the recommended approach. With the attachments, you can you can scan faster and at longer distances, with high-range scanners ranging more than 10 feet.

#3 Receiving Functionality

Let’s say the production manager ordered components needed for next week’s production schedule. Those components have been delivered, now sit on the loading dock, and you have to bring them into the system. The warehouse management app makes all this easy, explains Quinn: “Having receiving functionality in the app makes it simple for the user with a handheld or small device to bring the inventory into the system as soon as it arrives. They can just scan all the items, post the receipt order right then and there, and then it’s in your system. No extra processing time is needed.” You’ll know what you have the moment it arrives.

#4 Shipping Functionality

Shipping is the same as receiving but in reverse: the goods are going out not coming in. The app makes it just as easy, “You have a couple different things you can do with shipping,” says Quinn. “You can treat the shipments like pick tickets. Shipping personnel can see each packing slip that comes down from the system as orders and then go grab inventory from the shelf, load that into the pack slip and then ship the order out.”

all abas apps are built with feedback that consultant teams collect from abas customers

With the app, the workflow happens without delay.  Instead of having someone in the back office approve all these processes, they can just send the request down. The shipping personnel can finish all the actions without going back up to the office for anything. 

How abas Built the Warehouse Management App

All abas apps are built with feedback that consultant teams collect from abas customers. The Warehouse Management app in particular is one that abas built in partnership, adding features based on customer/user feedback and requests.

As an example of how abas uses customer feedback, Quinn notes that “our apps are handmade to support touch screen monitors, so they’re very easy to use this way, and they’re also very adaptable to small screens, which supports mobility. These are things that traditional software is not the best at.” Users also like the flexibility of using different devices and platforms, including phones, tablets and desktops. It gives users a better range of choices to use the app rather than just traditional Windows desktop apps.

Quinn believes that the way abas apps integrate with abas ERP is a major, if sometimes unsung, benefit for users. “When people ask us about what the major benefits of the app are, the first one that always comes to my mind is that integration with abas ERP. Other ERPs exist, and other mobile apps exist, but there aren’t too many ERPs that have first-party, highly integrated mobile applications like ours do.” This greatly helps abas users work smarter whenever and wherever they choose to work.