Zoho Inventory Consultant, Philippines

Stock spread across islands, and goods at sea

A Philippine distributor rarely has a single warehouse. Typical setups include a main warehouse in Luzon, hubs in the Visayas and Mindanao, and branch stockrooms or consignment locations close to customers. Goods spend real time on vessels between them.

In Zoho Inventory I set this up with:

• Warehouses per hub and branch, each with a responsible person and its own count routine.
• Transfer orders for interisland shipments, so stock leaves one warehouse and arrives at another only when the receiving team confirms it. That keeps goods at sea from inflating the stock of either side.
• Units of measure that match how you buy and sell, for example cases from suppliers and pieces to retailers.
• Reorder levels per warehouse, reflecting longer lead times for islands served by fewer sailings.

The hardest part is not configuration but discipline: branch staff must record receipts and dispatches on the day, from a phone if needed. If they cannot, any system will show the wrong numbers. I agree the routine with branch managers before go-live and check variance reports after it.

The general setup logic is on the global Zoho Inventory page. This page focuses on what changes when your warehouses are separated by sea.

Shopee, Lazada and cash on delivery

Many Philippine sellers run a marketplace store alongside a wholesale business, and some sell through social commerce as well. Each channel brings its own order format, fees and return rules.

Before promising anything, I check what connects:

• Marketplace connectors. Zoho Inventory integrates natively with some marketplaces and storefronts. For Shopee, Lazada or others, availability may depend on third-party connectors. Coverage changes, so I check the current position with Zoho or whoever supplies the connector, and trial it with live orders before you commit.
• Stock sync. Decide which warehouse feeds each marketplace and how often stock levels push out, so you do not oversell during a sale event.
• Cash on delivery. Courier remittances arrive later and net of fees. The payment matching belongs in Zoho Books or your ledger, with the order in Inventory showing when it was delivered and paid.
• Returns. Returned parcels come back damaged, incomplete or fine. Each outcome needs a different stock treatment.

Where no reliable connector exists, a daily order import from the marketplace's export file is often safer than a fragile live link. I would rather recommend a plain routine that works than an integration that fails during a sale.

Imports, customs brokers and landed cost in pesos

Importers bring goods from China, other ASEAN countries, Japan, the US and elsewhere, usually priced in USD and cleared through a customs broker. The true cost of each item includes freight, insurance, customs duties, import VAT and broker charges, arriving on separate documents at different times.

How I approach it in Zoho Inventory:

• Purchase orders in supplier currency, with exchange rate handling agreed with your accountant.
• Apportioning charges such as freight, duties and broker fees to each item in a shipment, by value, quantity or weight, with the landed cost function if your edition has it. Check the subscription before relying on it.
• Separation of recoverable taxes. Import VAT that your accountant treats as input tax should not be loaded into item cost. That treatment is for your tax advisor to confirm.
• Batch and expiry recorded at receipt for food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals or chemicals, where product registration and recall readiness matter.

Getting landed cost right changes your margin reports and pricing decisions. I test it with a real past shipment and compare the results with finance before go-live. For broader multi-currency design, see ERP for multi-currency.

Invoices, delivery receipts and the registered system

Zoho Inventory can create invoices, but in the Philippines the invoice is a tax document with content and numbering requirements set by the BIR, and it should come from the accounting system your accountant has registered and controls. Where Inventory and Books sit in one Zoho organization, the invoice made from a sales order is a Books document. When your ledger is another system, the design needs more care.

Points to settle with your accountant:

• Which system issues the invoice, and whether its invoice series and format meet current BIR requirements for your registration.
• How delivery receipts or similar documents your customers expect are produced, and whether they are needed in your case.
• How VAT or percentage tax is applied to each item, which your advisor decides.
• What the BIR's move toward electronic invoicing means for your system, and whether Zoho supports what you need. Confirm with Zoho and your advisor.

My role is to make sure orders, packages and shipments in Inventory carry clean customer, item and tax code data into the invoicing system, and that nobody issues a second invoice from the wrong place. The ledger side is covered on my Zoho Books Philippines page.

When a Philippine distributor needs an ERP instead

Zoho Inventory is a capable order and stock tool for small and mid-sized trading businesses. It reaches its limits in recognizable ways:

• Manufacturing or repacking beyond simple assemblies, such as food processing, repacking bulk goods or contract manufacturing with routings and scrap.
• Complex pricing with many customer-specific price lists, rebates, trade promotions and van sales settlements.
• Several companies that buy and sell between themselves and need consolidated reporting.
• Warehouse depth such as bin-level put-away rules, wave picking or barcode-driven operations at high volume.
• Heavy branch POS where stores need their own point-of-sale with offline capability.

Then a written fit-gap against Odoo, ERPNext and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is worth more than any demo. That route is laid out on the Philippines ERP consultant page and in the distribution ERP comparison.

The work runs remotely in English, through workshops, recorded walkthroughs for branch teams and a shared issue list. Visits to a warehouse are possible by arrangement. See the Philippines overview for the wider picture.