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 objective was to centralize orders, automate workflows, and restore operational reliability.
Number of Zoho apps integrated
2
Industries
The challenge
Here are the challenges the company faced before Tooly's intervention:
Lack of a clear link between customer orders and supplier orders, leading to invoicing and delivery errors.
Manual container management: cancellation and consolidation of individual purchase orders, without volume automation.
Limited visibility into 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 calculation of volumes (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. This module 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 receiving 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 stockouts, customer order tracking, and synchronization with purchase orders.
The client primarily operates via dropshipping, meaning that products sold are not kept in physical inventory. This functionality was therefore implemented and optimized in Zoho Inventory to ship orders directly to customers and remove these items from inventory tracking.
Finally, the delivery tracking platform used by the company was 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, linked to the consolidated purchase orders in Zoho Inventory. Company personnel were trained and supported to adopt the new workflows, optimize Inventory usage, and consolidate best practices.
Tooly Project Approach
The project was conducted according to Tooly’s proven approach, which has been successful many times: detailed needs assessment upstream 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, notably:
- 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 concrete gains:
Centralization and Visibility
All customer orders are grouped and correctly attributed within containers.
Automations
Container volume (m³) calculation, stockout management, and dropshipping flow, reducing errors and manual tasks.
Productivity
Simplified one-click receiving planned for the future, streamlined logistics flows.
Data Reliability
Greater confidence in inventory and orders, enabling 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 case 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.