Wherefour Optimizes Inventory and Co-Packing Success via Linked Accounts

Effective inventory management and communication between companies are critical factors in successful co-packing collaborations – which is why we are excited about Wherefour. It adds a new level of visibility to help food companies and co-packers work together more seamlessly.

How Does a Co-Packer Help Food Companies?

Co-packing, where a food company manufactures and packages a product for a client, offers advantages for both parties. For the company outsourcing its manufacturing, co-packing enables a less-expensive approach to scale up production and packaging without investing in manufacturing equipment or labor or booking time in a commercial kitchen. Some co-packers also apply their industry knowledge to help start-ups with pricing and distribution advice while benefitting from a steady production revenue stream.

Inventory Management With Wherefour Software

Inventory management, however, presents a frequent challenge in co-packing arrangements. For instance, a co-packer’s client might purchase some or all of the necessary ingredients and drop-ship them to the co-packer, or the co-packer might supply common ingredients to several clients that it can purchase at lower rates than each client can.

With Wherefour’s new release, food manufacturers and co-packers can link Wherefour accounts for customized, real-time, read-only access that allows co-packers and their clients to improve their visibility into ingredient and inventory levels.

This cloud-based, shared access to inventory data helps each party maintain optimal levels, reduces manual tracking and reconciliation, and allows food companies and their co-packers to focus more on their specialized expertise.

For example, a food company can see which ingredients a co-packer has, enabling them to maintain appropriate levels efficiently. Similarly, a co-packer can allocate ingredients among its clients more effectively.

With this new functionality, clients and co-packers can eliminate a large portion of time going back and forth over the phone and email to confirm who has which ingredients and where that inventory is physically located and resolve disparities among each company’s records. Partners can also avoid delays in ingredient shipments that can cause production and distribution problems.

This is just one of the many new features in Wherefour’s newest release. Other important features include:

  • More in-depth integration with Sage Intacct! With this new release, users can map customers to Sage Intacct locations and inventory to Sage Intacct departments, locations, and warehouses.
  • Exporting work order results for a specific date range.
  • Skipping COGS calculations on orders that are prepaid or meet other criteria.
  • Shipment reports now show the cost and profit amounts for each item.

This release is the latest demonstration of Wherefour’s commitment to continually improving features and functionality to benefit its customers. If you’re interested in seeing how Wherefour can help you manage inventory more effectively – contact us.