Whether you’re stocking the shelves with something to sell or just keeping tabs on the tools you use, keeping abreast of the stock levels is vital to day-to-day operations. And once records are a mess, it become a burden to play catch-up, and locate your items.
Inventory can change from something you are struggling with to something your company excels at with inventory control software. For example, business owners are well aware that running out of stock can be a costly mistake. You probably turn away sales, or place an “out-of-stock notice, which translates into lost profits. And reordering isn’t something you want to just do when you “think” you’ve run out of a product. Proper inventory management is about creating processes that ensure your products flow in and out of your business, in a reliable, and traceable manner.
Managing And Tracking Your Items
Tracking inventory sounds pretty simple: track what comes in, and what goes out, and compare the numbers to make sure you’re not miscounting anything. The reality is, this process becomes complex, even for those running small businesses.
Older tracking systems were straightforward, however today’s business formulas involve managing a lot more data, and requires consideration of any irregularities, due to theft or breakage, or perhaps managing inventory for multiple locations. Inventory control software not only provides better accuracy, but can also help with more advanced methods, like forecasting sales, and knowing when reordering is required.
The Old Analog System Of Pen And Paper
Surprisingly, many departments are still using pen and paper to track inventory. It’s affordable, plentiful, and works with any pen and sheet of paper, but it’s no longer manageable.
One of the drawbacks of the old analog system is that it isn’t scalable. It’s easy to run out of space on a sheet of paper, or reaching the last page in a notebook, and more importantly, it’s harder to keep track of all those multiple sheets of paper. After a while, you’ll inevitably have multiple notebooks spread out that require filing, which ultimately requires more space.
The paper and pen method also creates a bottleneck when only one person knows about these books, leaving other employees to conduct searches, page by page, to locate what they need. Your business lives in your records, and while paper may still be semi-convenient, mishaps, like flood and fires can eliminate your records quickly.
Valuable data today should be kept using software programs that manage the information into databases that provide multiple backups, and are safe from office hazards. This not only makes the system faster and improves productivity, but tracks inventory on an on-going basis.
