Optimizing order and inventory management with Zoho

The client is a B2B importer of food packaging products, primarily serving Canadian restaurants and caterers. Orders can be standardized or customized with a logo, and deliveries are made by container every two to three months.

Before Tooly’s intervention, inventory and order management was fragmented: customer orders were managed individually in Zoho Inventory, but the client had to cancel individual purchase orders to create a single purchase order per container. This practice created complete chaos for inventory visibility and invoicing, leading to errors and inefficiencies. The goal was to centralize orders, automate workflows, and restore operational reliability.

Number of Zoho apps integrated

2

Industries

The challenge

Here are the issues the company faced before Tooly's intervention:

Lack of a clear link between customer and supplier orders, leading to invoicing and delivery errors.

Manual container management: cancellation and consolidation of individual purchase orders, without volume automation.

Limited visibility on inventory and products stored per client.

Unreliable data for planning shipments and supplies.

Complex logistics process requiring a customized solution in Zoho Inventory.

The goals

Tooly's mandate primarily aimed to:

Centralize and automate customer orders and containers in Zoho Inventory.
Maintain accurate product attribution to each customer, even when consolidating orders.
Automate the volume calculation (m³) for each container to avoid overloads and optimize filling.
Integrate shipments and real-time container tracking into Zoho Inventory.
Improve productivity and data reliability for warehouse staff.

The solution

Custom "Container" module in Zoho Inventory

There was no native solution in Zoho Inventory to address the manual container management problem, so the Tooly team created a custom module, which allows for:

Consolidating multiple customer orders into a single supplier purchase order, rather than having a purchase order for each customer;
Maintaining clear attribution of each product to its customer;
Automatically calculating the total container volume (m³) to avoid over-ordering and optimize shipments;
Planning a future one-click reception function for warehouse staff to confirm all orders in a container simultaneously;

This solution proved very effective and demonstrated real scalable value, so much so that Tooly also replicated it for another client.

Inventory and logistics flow management

Although the company was already using Zoho Inventory, the tool was not fully optimized or utilized to its full potential. The Tooly team therefore reconfigured it to enable full use of native functionalities, including stock shortages, customer order tracking, and synchronization with purchase orders.

The client primarily operates via dropshipping, meaning that products sold are not kept in a physical inventory. This functionality was therefore implemented and optimized in Zoho Inventory in order to ship orders directly to customers and remove these items from inventory tracking.

Finally, the delivery tracking platform used by the company has been integrated with Zoho Inventory, making container status visible in real time directly on purchase orders.

Billing support and training

The Tooly team also optimized the use of Zoho Books for tracking and sending invoices, in relation to the consolidated purchase orders in Zoho Inventory. The company’s staff were trained and supported to adopt the new workflows, optimize Zoho Inventory usage, and consolidate best practices.

The Tooly project approach

The project was conducted according to Tooly’s proven approach, which has proven successful time and time again: detailed needs assessment before starting to thoroughly understand client priorities, weekly meetings to validate progress and adjust configurations, and prioritization of features offering the best short-term return on investment.

Several factors contributed to the success of this project, including:

Tooly’s technical expertise, creativity, and problem-solving ability to adapt Zoho to a unique client process;
The creation of a custom module that did not exist in native functionalities, to meet the company’s primary need;
Close collaboration and team training to ensure adoption and reliability of new processes;
Pragmatic prioritization of immediate impact actions to quickly improve operational efficiency.

After the integration

Results and benefits

Following the work, the client benefits from tangible gains:

Centralization and visibility

All customer orders are consolidated and correctly attributed within containers.

Automations

Container volume calculation (m³), as well as stock shortages and dropshipping flow management, reducing errors and manual tasks.

Productivity

Simplified one-click reception planned for the future, streamlined logistics flows.

Data reliability

Greater trust in inventory and orders, allowing for more informed decision-making.

Shipment tracking

Container status viewable directly from Zoho Inventory, facilitating planning and customer service.

Next steps

Here’s what the client and Tooly plan to implement for the next phase of the project:

Automation of customer order entry directly from websites or forms;
Full deployment of Zoho Analytics to enable sales forecasting for non-customized products;
Integration of Zoho CRM for global tracking and centralization of customer information and order flows;
Continuous optimization of the Container module and related workflows to support upcoming delivery periods.

This technical study demonstrates how Tooly can transform complex logistics processes into automated and reliable solutions within the Zoho environment, while creating scalable custom modules tailored to the specific needs of its clients.