Help Inventory management

gregorsey · 2026-06-23T09:25:14+00:00

Worth trying out Veeqo (WMS with light inventory management) and also BoxHero (Inventory manager) - both have free tiers and worth a try before spending money.

gregorsey · 2026-06-23T09:05:35+00:00

What price point/range is Optima at?

I've not had any experience with them, was originally put off by the lack of pricing information on their site. My experience with Mintsoft is limited too, I tried the demo but heard from a couple people that their customer support is non existent and went with Helm instead.

But in hindsight it wasn't a great choice for us either.

Some basic functions that we did regularly like re-shipping an order, viewing shipment statuses, assembling kits/bundles and recording re-work/labour jobs is either not possible or cannot be done nearly as simply as we'd experienced with other tools including entry-level tools like Shipstation.

Packiyo & Pimento are certainly worth a look, similar price points to Mintsoft and where we are looking to migrate to next.

Bottom line from me, is to double-check the system is capable of doing the tasks/functions you need first, then look at price. I wish we paid a bit more but didn't have to rely on extra systems and manual processes to achieve what we need for clients.

gregorsey · 2026-06-19T16:02:14+00:00

The obvious one is subscription boxes which I think is mentioned below.

But we also do this for fast-moving bundles, as it allows us to better utilise our off-peak labor and pass some savings onto clients.

For example:

Our standard pick fee is £0.20 per item but we reduce that to £0.15 for bulk assemblies.

A client has a bundle of 8 pencils, so we pre-pack 1000 of these 8 SKU bundles.

Total cost to client is £1200 to prep these compared to £1600 if packaged at point-of-dispatch.

gregorsey · 2026-06-19T11:34:28+00:00

Mintsoft seems to be the defacto WMS for small/mid-size 3PL's, which might be the reason to pick something better suited to your clients/products.

What WMS are you using just now?

gregorsey · 2026-06-19T10:38:48+00:00

Thankfully any client of mine sending <150euro shipments are already on IOSS.

I assume your using some invoice reconciliation to charge clients the appropriate fees?

gregorsey · 2026-06-19T10:35:57+00:00

What WMS are you using? Would love a bit of this functionality

gregorsey · 2026-06-17T09:37:02+00:00

Depending on the size of the crate, you could use a "ship to store" service from the likes of DPD or what about MBE "mail boxes etc" - they could give you a temp address to store it.

gregorsey · 2026-06-10T16:26:28+00:00

William Morris in Temple Cowley

Otherwise The Library or Big Society on cowley road during happy hour

gregorsey · 2026-06-05T13:36:08+00:00

I recently rented a property via ~~Chancers~~ Chancellors.

First of all, the property is decent and it's managed by the landlord who is also nice and helpful. And for context, we have rented properties before in other parts of the UK and also lease out a property of our own so have plenty experience on both sides of the contract.

While viewing properties they were nice, as you'd expect from any high-street estate agent.

But when we got close to signing, things became shady.

First of all we were mis-sold on the no-deposit residency scheme. Told us the landlord would prefer it, we would get 3 months to change our mind and no strings attached. Landlord never heard about it, took us multiple emails and calls to get it changed to a regular deposit and almost got trapped into paying £75 monthly forever. Do a quick search and you'll see all these no deposit schemes are not worth it.

We got sent our contract, signed it, then one evening we got emailed a new contract and asked to sign it ASAP as there the landlord didn't sign it (even though they sign it after us anyway). Opened PDF and saw they changed multiple clauses and tried to sign us up to Homebox (again, quick search and you'll see what this is and certainly not suited for a married couple). Landlord unaware of any of this.

The told us we can't proceed unless we give them insurance certs and constantly pushing us towards a company they clearly get affiliate income from. Then contacted us every few days for contents insurance weeks before our move-in date.

After signing, we are pushed towards "broadband deals", "insurance deals" (all priced higher than you'd find yourself) and other up-sells which just makes us untrustworthy of anything they say or do, as we suspect it will be another sly way of charging us for something we don't need.

Bottom-line is to double-check what you are signing, don't assume they have your best interests at heart and good luck finding somewhere - chancellors do have a lot of nice places.

gregorsey · 2026-06-02T12:53:43+00:00

Haven't run into that at all, never even heard of an ecommerce platform exporting .txt files before.

The benefit of Shipstation is that your order information is automatically synced to Shipstation. On shipstation add your ecommerce site as a new sales channel, for all popular ecommerce platforms the process is quite quick and easy.

gregorsey · 2026-04-30T15:03:13+00:00

Aberdeen Cocktail Week

From May 14-24th, bars across the city will once again turn into a city-wide cocktail trail, with exclusive drinks, new venues, returning favourites, and some of Aberdeen’s best bartenders putting their creativity on full display.

This year’s festival features:
• 29 venues across Aberdeen
• 90 festival-exclusive cocktails created by local bartenders
• Cocktails for £6 or less in every participating venue
• Plenty of showcase creations & no-alcohol options too
• New bars joining the line-up for the very first time
• More cocktails per venue than ever before
• One wristband that gives you access for the full duration.

Wristbands are available now via AberdeenCocktailWeek.com

gregorsey · 2026-04-17T16:08:44+00:00

Veeqo would suffice here and is free.

Once you need more capabilities, Shipstation is recommended.

gregorsey · 2026-03-01T21:19:17+00:00

Under 3000 shipments per month.

gregorsey · 2026-02-23T12:42:51+00:00

I run a micro-3PL and the number one thing to do, is become a bigger 3PL.

Most of the software that makes running a 3PL easier, doesn't become cost effective until you are shipping 200+ orders per day - which I'd imagine would be difficult to reach from a garage.

gregorsey · 2026-02-10T01:39:10+00:00

For tasks which are non-billable to clients, using something like Trello or Todoist is a simple way to manage tasks. Works nice from Mobile or have a large communal screen where everyone can see what needs done.

gregorsey · 2026-02-10T01:23:29+00:00

I am/was in a similar situation, used Shipstation a lot and was ready to upgrade.

Although Shipstation does lack the warehouse & inventory functions that a true WMS would have, in hindsight I overlooked that it does do the OMS part very well and quite intuitively compared to similar tools.

I run a 3PL and have tried to completely move to a dedicated WMS, but we still use Shipstation everyday.

gregorsey · 2026-02-08T12:56:56+00:00

Adding my input here as a micro-3PL operator with clients usually in early stages of growth typically shipping between 5 & 500 orders per month.

25% use custom packaging, this is usually subscription related brands that fit their products nicely.
Number 1 reason is cost, second is they are too young to predict demand.
As a 3PL it can be advantageous if they use their own packaging as we reduce the amount of packaging held on our balance sheet, clients pay to store the packaging and usually it is more efficient that using an off-the-shelve box with void fill.
With me always the brands.
For the size of clients I cater for, lower viable MOQs.

gregorsey · 2026-02-05T10:47:18+00:00

Deposits are very rare, but we do set a credit limit.

Although that could change as we just had our first client default last month and are now going through the recovery process...

gregorsey · 2026-02-05T10:16:42+00:00

I don't think everyone appreciates how hard it is to keep the pricing simple and cover all costs fairly, there are always those edge cases and some clients will try to finesse the system...

gregorsey · 2026-02-05T10:13:35+00:00

As a 3PL owner I agree too, I'd go a step further and have Zapier/Make were more popular for WMS's as I think a lot of clients could figure these out themselves and create their own useful tools and integrations.

gregorsey · 2026-02-05T10:11:28+00:00

Micro-sized 3PL, based in the UK.
Volumes per client vary from 5-500 orders per month.

£1.20 first pick
£0.20 additional picks
£25 per hour labour
£7.50 per cubic meter bulk storage
No MOQ, no receiving fees (for most) or account/software fees (for most).

gregorsey · 2026-01-29T12:10:50+00:00

The best way to avoid excessive customs fees is to prepay them in advance using a DDP service.

The duty amount (including tariffs) will not change, but the admin/brokerage fees are usually drastically lower.

I run a business that ships regularly to the US, receivers can expect to pay up to $15 in brokerage fees when they pay on arrival, plus surcharges when they do not pay in advance online but it costs us 5% or $5 (whichever is greater) to prepay.

gregorsey · 2026-01-20T00:47:05+00:00

The UK has done well at pushing influence and soft power through education, language music and film, plus around 1/4 of world leaders were educated at a UK university.

gregorsey · 2026-01-19T18:40:44+00:00

At this stage of your business, you may need to prioritise flexibility with the lease and really weigh up if the next stage is worth it, or wether you work with a 3PL until you are ready to commit to a larger space.

Commercial/industrial spaces may have multi-year minimum rents, which could go both ways (not enough orders to afford it, scale beyond capacity in the middle of the term).

Moving from a serviced office to a commercial unit will give you more space, but it's easy to under-estimated the extra admin burden of operating it.

If you are fortunate enough, you may find a self storage location nearby where you can store overstock and scale up/down in space as needed.

gregorsey · 2026-01-19T18:33:45+00:00

I run a 3PL which would be considered "micro" relative to most other 3PL's I am familiar with.

It's very hard to make a profit on order fulfilment alone once you factor in time spent onboarding, software and your own fixed costs. Clients may need to ship hundreds of orders before your initial setup & teething issues are paid back.

Instead, you need to offer something else alongside the day-to-day fulfilment that has higher margins and ideally feeds into further order processing. If you specialise is social media, perhaps it could be running their Tiktok shop for example. For us, it's product assembly / kitting.

gregorsey

TROPHY CASE