How to Make Your Inventories Work for You: Tips on Inventory Management System

Keeping inventories is a crucial part of any business. It helps you track your inventory and avoid over-stocking or under supplying your products. Furthermore, having an organized inventory management system enables you to keep track of your stock, monitor usage and prevent wastage. However, the challenge with inventory is keeping it updated at all times and monitoring the quantities or units.

This blog post will cover some tips that will help you manage your inventory more effectively. Keeping an updated inventory saves you from running out of stock. Moreover, it alerts you if there’s a problem with excess or shortage of any item – something that is especially helpful in case of expensive items or perishable food items.

How to Ensure Efficient Stock Management?

Enlisted below are a few tips to ensure efficient stock management;

• Know your inventory
• Automate your inventory processes
• Use your data
• Integrate your inventory with other tools
• Track the quantities of each item

Know Your Inventory

Before you start managing your inventory, you need to know what items you have. If you are running a store, you will have a complete list of the items you stock, their individual quantity and price. For other businesses, you also need to keep track of the raw material and finished goods that you produce or buy from suppliers. Your inventory will help you know when to re-stock, purchase, and what to expect when your supplier delivers the ordered goods. Keeping an updated and thorough inventory will also help you in case of an audit or tax compliance. You will know what’s in your inventory and can show it on paper if a government officer asks you to show your list.

Automate Your Inventory Processes

Manually managing your inventory and updating it every day is a time-consuming process. You can automate this process by using barcode scanners and inventory management software. A barcode scanner or stock management software will allow you to scan each and every product in your inventory and track its usage. You can install a barcode scanner on your shelves and use them to scan incoming shipments. You can also use an app on your phone with a built-in scanner to scan the items in your inventory. Barcode scanners are available for Android and iOS, and you can easily find them online.

Use Your Data

The most important inventory data to track is the number of items you have in your inventory. However, this data is insufficient to determine whether you need to re-stock or if everything is in order. Moreover, you also need to keep track of the following data:

• Stock turn rate – is the number of times the products are sold in a year. If your stock turns every six months, you can re-stock every six months.
• Stock turnover rate – is the number of times the product is sold in a week.
• Inventory value – is the total value of all the items in your inventory.

Integrate Your Inventory with Other Tools

There are many inventory management apps available online that you can use to manage your inventory. You can also integrate these apps with other online tools such as CRM, accounting software, e-commerce platform, or supply chain management tools. For example, if you are using Shopify to sell your products online, you can connect your inventory management app with Shopify. This way, you can automatically add newly added items from your inventory to Shopify and mark them as “in stock”. This also applies to the items that are out of stock, and you can use your inventory management app to mark them as “out of stock”.

Track the Quantities of Each Item

Once you have your inventory data, the next step is to track the quantities of each item. This will help you determine the effectiveness of your management system. Are you running out of a specific item? Is there any item that needs to be re-stocked? To track the quantities of each item, you can add a column in your inventory spreadsheet and keep a tally of each item. Alternatively, you can use a spreadsheet monitoring tool such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to keep track of the units. If you are using a barcode scanner, you can set it to automatically keep track of the units of each item.

Get the Best Inventory Management System

This article explains different tips on the stock management systems you can use to manage your inventory effectively. Keeping an updated inventory saves you from running out of stock and alerts you if there’s a problem with excess or shortage of any item. This way, you can take proactive steps to solve the issue and keep your business running smoothly.

If you are looking for the best inventory management system, SMACC can be the right option. It comes with an inventory module, a financial accounting module, and an asset management module. Hence, you will not only be managing your inventories but also finance and assets. So, get your SMACC account today and streamline your business to take it to new heights.