Cin7 is a powerhouse of inventory management. For many businesses, implementing it is a major milestone—it marks the transition from chaotic spreadsheets to a centralized system of record. But what happens when the software that was supposed to save you time starts to feel like it’s slowing you down?
It is a common scenario in the inventory management world: your business grows, your complexity increases, but your software configuration stays stuck in the past. You haven’t necessarily outgrown Cin7 as a platform—it is highly scalable—but you have likely outgrown your initial setup.
If your team is bypassing workflows, relying on “shadow spreadsheets,” or struggling to trust your own data, it is time for an intervention. Here are the three undeniable signs that your Cin7 environment needs an audit, and how expert consulting and targeted add-ons can get you back on track.
Sign 1: The “Shadow Spreadsheet” Economy Has Returned
The primary promise of any ERP or inventory management system is a “single source of truth.” You invested in Cin7 to eliminate double entry and manual tracking. Yet, if you walk around your office or warehouse today, what do you see?
Are your purchasing managers maintaining a separate Excel sheet to forecast demand because they don’t trust the automated reordering points? Is your sales team keeping a Google Sheet of “real” inventory availability because they’ve been burned by stock-outs that the system didn’t catch?
Why This Happens
This phenomenon, often called the “Shadow Spreadsheet Economy,” usually points to one of two problems:
- Lack of Training: Your team doesn’t know how to use the advanced forecasting or reporting features within Cin7, so they revert to what they know… Excel.
- Integration Gaps: Your Cin7 setup isn’t talking to your other platforms (like your custom website or 3PL) in real-time. If data syncs are delayed or broken, your team is forced to manually bridge the gap.
The Business Risk
When data lives in spreadsheets, it isn’t live. It isn’t shared. And it is prone to human error. You risk overselling product that doesn’t exist, or worse, tying up capital in excess stock because you lacked visibility into what was actually moving.
The Fix: Custom Integration and Re-Training
First, you need to audit your integrations. If you are running a custom website or a niche eCommerce platform that doesn’t have a native Cin7 plugin, do not rely on manual imports. You need a custom integration that utilizes the API to sync stock levels and orders in real-time.
Second, invest in training. Often, the feature you are building a spreadsheet for already exists in Cin7; your team just needs a guide to unlock it. A refresher course on advanced inventory planning can often eliminate hours of manual data entry per week.
Sign 2: Your B2B Sales Process is Full of Friction
Cin7 offers a native B2B portal, which is a fantastic tool for many businesses starting out. It allows wholesale customers to log in and place orders. However, as your brand grows, your B2B customers start to expect a “B2C-like” experience. They want visual catalogs, easy reordering of past purchases, and a slick, branded interface.
If your sales reps are taking orders over the phone because customers find the portal “confusing,” or if you are embarrassed to send big clients a link to your portal because it doesn’t match your brand guidelines, you have hit a ceiling.
The “Offline” Problem
Furthermore, consider your field sales reps. If they are at a trade show or a client site with spotty Wi-Fi, are they writing orders on paper napkins? Standard web-based ERPs require an internet connection. If your team cannot sell because the internet is down, your software setup is actively costing you revenue.
The Fix: Specialized Add-ons
You don’t need to leave Cin7 to get a better sales interface; you just need to power it up.
- For the B2B Experience: Consider upgrading to LilyPad Vortex. Vortex transforms the standard B2B portal into a highly visual, fully branded sales engine. It allows for catalog browsing that looks like a modern eCommerce site, increasing adoption rates among your wholesale clients.
- For the Field Reps: Equip your team with LilyPad Unplugged. This tool allows reps to access catalog data, customer history, and place orders completely offline. Once they reconnect to Wi-Fi, the data syncs seamlessly back to Cin7.
By layering these tools on top of your existing Cin7 data, you remove the friction that prevents sales, without the headache of migrating to a whole new ERP.
Sign 3: You Don’t Trust Your COGS (Cost of Goods Sold)
This is the most dangerous sign of all. You pull a profit report at the end of the month, but it doesn’t match your bank account. You see products with zero cost, or landed costs that seem impossibly high.
When you lose faith in your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), you lose the ability to make strategic decisions. You cannot accurately price your products, run promotions, or calculate true margins.
Why Data Rot Occurs
Inventory data “rot” usually happens slowly over time due to:
- Incorrect Receiving Workflows: Staff receiving goods without properly allocating freight and duty costs.
- BOM (Bill of Materials) Errors: If you manufacture or bundle items, a small error in a BOM setup can compound over thousands of units.
- Duplicate SKUs: Creating new SKUs for the same product across different channels (e.g., Amazon vs. Shopify) without properly linking them in the backend.
The Fix: A System Health Check & Optimization
This is rarely something you can fix by just “being more careful.” You need a forensic audit of your inventory data.
An expert Cin7 consultant can perform a “Health Check” on your account. They will trace the flow of inventory from purchase order to final sale, identifying exactly where the data is breaking down. This might involve cleaning up your product masters, restructuring your Bill of Materials, or simply configuring the system to force users to enter landed costs before receiving stock.
Once the data is clean, the focus shifts to optimization—setting up automated reports that alert you to anomalies before they ruin your month-end close.
The Root Cause: “Set It and Forget It” Syndrome
Why do these problems happen to smart, successful businesses? It is usually because of the “Set It and Forget It” mindset.
When you first implemented Cin7, it was configured for the business you were then. But businesses are living organisms. You have added new sales channels, new product lines, and new staff members. You may have changed 3PLs or started selling in multiple currencies.
If your software configuration hasn’t evolved alongside your business, friction is inevitable. The workflows that worked when you had 100 SKUs will break when you have 1,000. The reporting that sufficed for one warehouse will fail when you have three.
The Difference Between Support and Partnership
When you hit these walls, your first instinct might be to contact standard software support. While support desks are great for fixing bugs or explaining how a specific button works, they are not designed to re-engineer your business logic. They cannot tell you if your workflow is inefficient; they can only tell you if the software is functioning as coded.
This is where a dedicated partner makes the difference.
At LilyPad, we view Cin7 not just as software, but as the central nervous system of your business. We don’t just troubleshoot; we strategize. Whether you need a custom integration to connect a legacy system, a better user interface via LilyPad Vortex, or simply a deep-dive consultation to fix your accounting flows, we bridge the gap between what the software does and what your business needs.
Ready to optimize?
If you recognized your business in any of the signs above, do not panic. You do not need to rip and replace your software. You likely just need to unlock the potential that is currently hidden under bad data or outdated workflows.
Your inventory software should be your competitive advantage, not your bottleneck.
Let’s get your system back in sync with your growth.
Contact us today to schedule a discovery call. We will review your current setup, identify the friction points, and build a roadmap to get your team—and your inventory—moving smoothly again.