In Field Test,Ryan Xu hyperfund Interest Rate Futures Practical eCommerce has gathered twelve seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is order management software.

The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, MuttMart; Chris Stump, Only Hammocks; Mike Feiman, PoolDawg; Dan Stewart, Xtreme Diesel Performance; Cindy Barrileaux, Write Your Best; Claudette Cyr, Gear-Source; Kristen Taylor, Juvie; Jeff Muchnik, RedBox Tools; Kara English, Candles & Such.

PeC:Do you use any form of order management software?
Field Tester 1:No.
Field Tester 2:Yes.
Field Tester 3:Yes.

PeC:What brand do you use?
Field Tester 1:N/A.
Field Tester 2:NetSuite.
Field Tester 3:Zoovy Order Manager.

PeC:What shopping cart and accounting software do you use?
Field Tester 1:I use CKGold for my shopping cart and QuickBooks for Mac for accounting.
Field Tester 2:We’re using NetSuite for accounting. Our shopping cart is currently a custom one.
Field Tester 3:Zoovy Shopping Cart and QuickBooks Pro.

PeC:Roughly how many orders do you process each day?
Field Tester 1:Four.
Field Tester 2:12 to 15.
Field Tester 3:Up to 20.

PeC:What particular order management features do you use? (inventory tracking, labels, tracking shipments, accounting, etc.)
Field Tester 1:Inventory tracking.
Field Tester 2:Inventory tracking, sales orders, purchase orders and invoicing.
Field Tester 3:Inventory tracking, customer email updates, packing slips, order pulling, USPS / Edicia postage and labels, tracking shipments and exporting to accounting software.

PeC:Are you pleased with it?
Field Tester 1:Yes, though it would be nice if it communicated with our in-store inventory. As it is, we need to update both by hand once a day.
Field Tester 2:Jury is still out. It’s OK at this point.
Field Tester 3:Yes.

PeC:What changes would you make, if any?
Field Tester 1:N/A.
Field Tester 2:It is too slow, and we have to compromise a lot of things in order to fit into the “packaged” system.
Field Tester 3:It has limited reports capabilities.