App of the month: DEAR Systems

Each month at Withers Tsang we take a closer look at one of the many applications and digital programs designed to help your business thrive.

This month we’re introducing an inventory management series, starting with DEAR systems.

DEAR systems is a cloud based ERP solution. More specifically, it’s an inventory management software designed for manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and e-commerce dealers.

Key features

Purchasing	Sales	Manufacturing
Forecasting feature	Drop shipping – sell products without stock	Create advanced bills of materials
Access supplier information and choose credible suppliers based on their value and profit	Create a sales order to automatically generate a purchase order	Finished goods module shows raw material availability and all manufacturing costs
Barcode scanning	Use barcode scanning to process inventory during product picks	Write-off damaged, stolen or lost goods
Set low stock reorder points to automatically trigger a purchase order	Integrate with your POS system	Break down bulk purchases into individual units with disassembly
Send reorder suggestion email	Store customer data to help better cater to your customers	Add pictures of your materials
	Control inventory across multiple channels

Inventory/Management control	Accounting	E-commerce
Create product families containing variations of the same product with a unique SKU	Bi-directional integration with accounting apps such as Xero	Update product listings and publish on all sales channels to sync your catalogue
Drop shipping – automatically generate purchase order after you create sales order	Automatically create and generate accounting entries and sync invoices, bills and payments	Every transaction synchronised to your DEAR platform
Barcode scanning when processing inventory	Access financial information in real time	Choose which location to allocate stock from your online sales
Integration with your POS system allowing you to sync physical sales with inventory	Uses FIFO and FEFO methods	Create automatic assemblies
Apply correct stock adjustments for accurate financial statements	Every transaction across all your sales channels is synced immediately, giving an accurate view of your business and real-time financials	Sell products even if they are out of stock
	Has financial reporting	Centralise coupons and discounts to keep track of customer loyalty

If you’re in the manufacturing industry, DEAR can help you manage your operations, production costs and, of course, inventory. It allows you to create an advanced bill of materials – for example, you can create product groups for complex product lines that contain variations of the same product, each assigned a unique SKU. DEAR also helps you estimate manufacturing costs and track all your expenses.

 One great feature of DEAR is the ability to manage your inventory across multiple warehouses, making it easier to track where your stock is. This feature is also essential if you’re in the wholesale or distribution industry. When paired with serial and batch tracking, it enables you to track all your inventory accurately, no matter where it is.

 DEAR gives you total visibility of the cost of goods sold, which provides a deeper understanding of your business’s profitability and allows you to better monitor shipping and handling fees. It also has built-in currency conversion, making it easier to view transactions that occur in multiple currencies.

 For retail businesses, DEAR offers the ability to set up a B2B portal. This allows you to create multiple catalogues and control which products you want to sell to which customers. DEAR also lets you create lay-by, account and loyalty points for customers, and makes it easier to process refunds and returns. You can also use it to manage your stocktaking process and receive instant alerts when stock is running low.

 DEAR systems has pretty decent usability with a clear, easy-to-follow dashboard. However, as with any new system or application, there’s always a learning curve! You can choose between a horizontal or vertical navigation style, and at the top (or side) you’ll find a range of sections including purchase, sale, production, inventory, financials and reports. In the sales and purchase sections you can select how you want to view your data through the general, accounting and fulfilment tabs (fulfilment is only shown under the sales section). Each tab provides you with a different view (with different filters and data) to suit either an accounting or fulfillment role.

 Accounting features and integrations:

 DEAR systems offers a wide range of integrations required for effective inventory management. There’s the option to integrate with POS systems such as Vend and Shopify, payments systems such as PayPal, and of course marketplace systems such as eBay, Amazon and Etsy.

 DEAR also offers integrations for effective accounting with Xero and QuickBooks.

Note: DEAR systems only integrates with QuickBooks Online not QuickBooks Desktop.

 Xero Integration:

 Xero -> DEAR:

Items created in Xero (such as chart of accounts, tax rules, payment terms and company addresses) will be synced with DEAR. Chart of accounts will be read-only in DEAR, so any changes will have to be made through Xero. Tax rules are editable on either side and will be synced both ways.

 DEAR -> Xero:

Items created in DEAR (such as purchase credit notes, purchase orders, credit memos, sale credit notes and transaction journals) will be synced with Xero. Authorised credit notes will be exported to Xero but are not allocated against invoices. Credit notes created in Xero will not be synced to DEAR. It’s optional to export purchase orders to Xero.

 Xero <--> DEAR:

Bill/sale/purchase payments or refunds, suppliers, customers, products/items, bills or purchase invoices and sales invoices are created both in Xero and DEAR and are synced both ways. Payments and refunds may be exported/imported from Xero or synced both ways depending on your settings. Products that are created or updated in DEAR will always be pushed to Xero, however it’s optional for modifications made on Xero to be exported to DEAR. Bills or purchase and sale invoices authorised on DEAR will be exported to Xero, but it’s optional for invoices authorised in Xero to be picked up by DEAR. Sale quotes are not exported.

 It’s important to note here that if you use the inventory functionality in Xero and have stock recorded there, you’ll have to remove it and re-create it in DEAR as it’s not compatible with DEAR systems.

 Pricing

Standard	Manufacturing	Retailing
-          USD$325 per month	USD $525 per month	USD$445 per month
5 users	8 users	8 users
	1 API Intergration	Unlimited locations and registers
		Unlimited POS users
Can add to this plan:	Can add to this plan:	Can add to this plan:
DEAR automations	Additional users	DEAR B2B portals
DEAR point of sale	DEAR point of sale	Additional external intergrations
DEAR B2B portals	DEAR B2B portals	Additional API intergrations

Concluding thoughts

Like many other programs, DEAR Systems offers DEAR API. This allows you to build a custom connection with any other any other application that DEAR doesn’t integrate with. It also provides some document and email templates which are highly customisable Microsoft mail merge fields. 

Overall DEAR Systems is one of the leading inventory management systems and will certainly help improve your business operations. However, there are alternative solutions available, so it’s important to weigh up the pros and cons and choose the system that works best for your business. Two other options are Unleashed and Cin7, which we will be reviewing soon, as part of our inventory management series.