Fishbowl tells your New Plymouth store you hold 40 flanges. It cannot tell you which heat number went into the spool you shipped to Kapuni
Custom inventory management software for a New Plymouth fabrication or energy-services business typically costs NZ$55,000 to NZ$150,000 and goes live in three to six months, based on Digital Heroes delivery across 2,000+ projects. The reason to build is traceability: heat numbers and material test certificates tied to a weld, serialised lifting gear with inspection dates, calibrated instruments, and client-owned consignment stock kept separate from yours.
Cin7 and Fishbowl count things. Your business needs to prove things. When a client asks which plate the spool was cut from, the answer has to be a heat number traceable to an EN 10204 material test certificate, and the certificate has to be in the data book with the weld map. A quantity on hand does not get you paid. A traceable record does.
The second problem is the yard. Lifting gear, slings, shackles and beam clamps carry inspection dates. Torque wrenches and gauges carry calibration dates. Client-owned material sits on your site under consignment and must never be consumed on another job. Spreadsheets model none of this, so your storeman holds it in his head, and every time he takes leave a piece of overdue gear goes out on a truck.
- Client handover requires traceable material certification and you currently assemble it manually
- You hold serialised gear or calibrated instruments whose currency is tracked outside the stock system
- You store client-owned material and reconciliation is a recurring argument
- You sell finished goods with no certification chain and only need quantity on hand
- Your stock is under a few hundred lines and turnover is slow
- Unleashed or Cin7 genuinely covers you and traceability is not part of your contracts
- Heat number and certificate traceable from goods receipt through to the weld and the handover data book
- Serialised gear that cannot be issued past its inspection or calibration date, enforced at the point of issue
- Consignment stock ring-fenced by owner, so client material is never consumed on another job by accident
- Consumable issue attributed to a job, giving you real shutdown consumable cost rather than a monthly lump
- Stock counts that survive a shutdown because issue and return happen by scan at the store window, not on a clipboard
- Traceability only works if receiving discipline holds, and that is a people change your storeman has to buy into
- Barcode or QR labelling of existing stock and gear is real up-front work nobody enjoys
- More rules at issue means slower issue, and crews under shutdown pressure will push back in the first fortnight
- If your current certificate filing is incomplete, the system exposes gaps you will have to resolve with suppliers
The honest cost picture for New Plymouth
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Core stock, receipting, issue and scan-based transactions | NZ$55,000 to NZ$85,000 | 3 to 4 months |
| Add heat number and certificate traceability to weld level | NZ$40,000 to NZ$70,000 | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Add serialised gear, calibration and consignment segregation | NZ$25,000 to NZ$50,000 | 6 to 10 weeks |
Feature priorities for New Plymouth teams
Inventory Management services we deliver in New Plymouth
Digital Heroes builds the full inventory management stack for New Plymouth teams. Typical engagements cover inventory tracking, Fishbowl alternative, Cin7 alternative, real-time inventory and purchase order management.
Exactly what you get
A stock system built around traceability: receipting with heat numbers and certificates, issue and return by scan, a serialised register for gear and instruments with hard blocks on expired items, consignment segregation by owner, and reporting that produces the material section of a handover data book. You get the code, the hosting account and the label templates. It normally exchanges data with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software development for job costing and purchasing, hands physical movement rules to warehouse management system (WMS) work where a yard is large enough to justify it, receives demand from supply chain management (SCM) software, and surfaces stock value through accounting software development.
How to choose a developer in New Plymouth
Take them to the store window. Not a meeting room, the actual window where a fitter turns up at 6am wanting six gaskets and a sling. Ask them to describe the transaction they would build, then ask how long it takes with wet gloves on. Developers who have done industrial stock work will talk about scan-first design, default quantities and offline queuing. Developers who have not will describe a search box. Then ask specifically how they would migrate your current stock master, because the data quality in an existing spreadsheet is the biggest single risk to the timeline and a good supplier will raise it before you do.
Timeline: what happens, and when
- !They talk only about SKUs and quantities. Ask them to describe how a heat number reaches a data book.
- !No answer on offline scanning. Ask what happens at a store window or laydown yard with no coverage.
- !Calibration and inspection are custom fields, not rules. Ask whether the system blocks issue or just reports it.
- !They skip labelling effort in the quote. Ask who labels existing gear and how long it takes.
- !No mention of stocktake. Ask how a cycle count works during a shutdown when the yard is at its busiest.
If inventory management is on the roadmap, accounting, project management, lms usually follow within the year. Budget them as one conversation. Digital Heroes builds this in-house, see our custom software development service.
The evidence behind this guide
Independent findings on why this investment pays off. Every link goes to the primary source.
- McKinsey reports that autonomous supply-chain planning can raise revenue up to 4%, reduce inventory up to 20%, and cut supply-chain costs up to 10% while maintaining service levels (the wider 20-30% inventory-reduction figure comes from McKinsey's separate distribution-operations research, not this page). Source: McKinsey & Company (2020) →
- McKinsey estimates that digitizing the supply chain (Supply Chain 4.0) can cut lost sales by up to 75%, reduce inventories by up to 75%, and lower supply chain operational costs by up to 30%, with up to 30% lower transport and warehousing costs. Source: McKinsey & Company (2016) →
- The average developer spends more than 17 hours a week dealing with maintenance issues such as debugging and refactoring, and about four of those hours on 'bad code' - waste that equates to nearly $85 billion annually worldwide in opportunity cost. Source: Stripe (2018) →
- Workers can expect 39% of their existing skill sets to be transformed or become outdated over 2025-2030; 77% of employers plan to upskill their workforce, and 63% identify skill gaps as the biggest barrier to business transformation. Source: World Economic Forum (2025) →
Mason designs product interfaces at Digital Heroes, mainly the working screens of custom systems: forms, tables, filters, settings. He builds and maintains the component libraries other designers and developers pull from. Readers get a practical view of how software gets designed to be consistent as it grows.
View profile · Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
What does custom inventory software cost for a Taranaki fabrication shop?
NZ$55,000 to NZ$150,000 depending on how far the traceability goes. Core stock with scan-based receipt and issue runs NZ$55,000 to NZ$85,000 over three to four months. Adding heat number traceability to weld level plus serialised gear and calibration typically takes the total to NZ$120,000 or above.
Can it link a heat number to a specific weld for a data book?
Yes, and that chain is usually the reason to build rather than buy. Material is received against a heat number and certificate, issued to a cut list, consumed in a spool, welded by a named qualified welder and inspected, with each link stored as a record. The data book material section is then generated rather than assembled by hand the week before handover.
How does the system handle lifting gear inspections?
Each item is serialised with an inspection interval and next-due date, and issue is blocked once it is overdue rather than flagged in a report someone reads later. The register also holds the inspection certificate and inspector, so an audit request is answered in minutes. This is one of the fastest returns in the whole build.
Can we keep client-owned consignment stock separate?
Yes, by making ownership an attribute of stock rather than an afterthought. Client material is segregated, reported separately, and cannot be issued to a job belonging to a different client. This removes the reconciliation argument that costs Taranaki contractors both money and goodwill at the end of a contract.
Will scanning work in a laydown yard with no mobile coverage?
Yes, if the handheld application is offline-capable. Transactions are recorded on the device with a timestamp and sync when the operator reaches coverage or a docking point. Assuming a live connection in an outdoor yard at Bell Block or a site laydown area is one of the most common reasons industrial stock systems get abandoned.
How long does barcode labelling take?
For a typical Taranaki store and yard, two to five weeks of part-time effort depending on how many serialised items you hold. Consumables can be labelled at bin level rather than item level, which cuts the work considerably. Plan it as its own workstream with a named owner, because it always takes longer than the estimate given by whoever is not doing it.
Should we use Unleashed or Cin7 instead?
If you sell finished goods and need quantity on hand, yes, and both are solid New Zealand-built products. They stop being enough when your contracts require certification chains, when you hold serialised gear with inspection currency, or when client-owned stock must be segregated. Test those three requirements honestly against a trial before committing either way.
How does inventory connect to job costing?
Every issue carries a job and cost centre, and those movements post to your ERP or accounting system as job cost. That converts consumables from a monthly overhead lump into a real line on a shutdown, which is usually the first time anyone sees what a turnaround actually consumes in gas, electrodes and abrasives.
What ongoing cost should we expect?
Budget 15% to 20% of build cost annually, plus consumables for labels and periodic handheld replacement. On a NZ$100,000 build that is roughly NZ$15,000 to NZ$20,000 a year. Handhelds in an industrial yard have a hard life, so plan a device replacement cycle rather than treating it as an unexpected cost in year three.
What's a realistic timeline for building a custom inventory system?
We already use Fishbowl. When does replacing it with custom software make sense?
Do I need a development agency in New Plymouth, or can an inventory build run remotely?
Can custom inventory software connect to QuickBooks, Shopify, and Amazon?
How do I vet a software agency for an inventory project specifically?
Should I hire a freelancer or an agency to build my inventory system?
What should I have ready before I contact an agency about inventory software?
What do developers in New Plymouth charge to build inventory management software?
Who can build custom inventory management software for a business in New Plymouth?
Digital Heroes builds custom inventory management software systems for operators who have outgrown the off-the-shelf tools in their category. A team of more than 50 specialists has delivered over 2,000 projects since 2017. Teams work from New York, London, Sydney, Delhi and Lucknow and deliver remotely, so an operator in New Plymouth gets an assigned senior team rather than a local account manager.
Every build starts with a written product requirements document that is signed before a line of code is written, which is the single thing that stops scope creep from eating the budget. Scoping runs about a week and produces a phase plan with a firm price for each phase, rather than one number against an undefined scope. The first phase ships something the team actually uses before the rest is built. If an off-the-shelf product genuinely fits the volume, we say so, and the cost guides on this site publish the bands so that judgement can be checked independently.
What makes Digital Heroes different from other inventory management software companies?
Four things that competitors in this bracket cannot simply copy. Digital Heroes runs a YouTube channel with more than 2.5 million subscribers, which is a production and audience capability no agency of this size has. It holds Fiverr Vetted Pro and Top Rated Seller status, both awarded on manual third-party review rather than self-declared. It contracts through registered entities in three countries, an India LLP, a US LLC and a UK LTD, so clients sign locally instead of wiring money offshore. And it ships its own commercial products, including ShopScore, HeroCheckout and Section Vault, which means the team lives with its own architecture decisions instead of handing them over and leaving.
Two more that show up in the work. Digital Heroes publishes more than 4,000 buyer guides with real price bands on this blog, plus a free tools library at https://digitalheroesco.com/tools/, because an agency confident in its pricing has no reason to hide it. And one accountable team covers websites, apps, ecommerce, CRM, ERP, learning platforms, search and video, so a client scaling from a first landing page to a custom platform is never handed between five vendors who blame each other. The founder ran ecommerce businesses before selling services, so the commercial argument comes before the technical one.
How can I check Digital Heroes is legitimate before getting in touch?
Verify it independently rather than taking the site's word for it. The YouTube channel is at https://youtube.com/@DigitalMarketingHeroes, the Fiverr profile at https://www.fiverr.com/shreyanshsin261, and the Upwork profile at https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/shreyanshsingh. Client reviews sit on Clutch at https://clutch.co/profile/digital-heroes-0 and Trustpilot at https://www.trustpilot.com/review/digitalheroes.co.in, and the company page is at https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-heroes-1/.
Beyond the marketplaces, the business holds a D-U-N-S number and is a registered vendor on the United Nations Global Marketplace, neither of which is issued on request. Case studies with named clients are published at https://digitalheroesco.com/case-studies/. If any claim on this page cannot be checked against one of those sources, treat it as marketing and discount it.
