Fight Inventory Pain Points
We’ve all experienced inventory management pains. Inaccurate inventory counts that cause mishaps, delays because of inaccuracy resulting in dissatisfied customers, costly end-of-year write-offs, and wasted time spent looking for lost inventory, are the most common pain points sited by businesses. While all these things can happen, the best part is, they don’t have to. There’s a way around these annoying mishaps that result in wasted money and time spent searching for lost items. Below are three common inventory pain points to avoid:
- Inaccurate inventory counts. There is nothing worse than finding out after the fact that someone miscalculated the inventory. Not only is it necessary to start all over, but you also must figure out a way to prevent this from happening in the future. Keeping track of inventory by hand is extremely tedious and time consuming. An employee might be forced to work overtime to complete the inventory counts which means more money goes into more paychecks. You could save your business money and improve employee productivity by allowing them to focus their attention elsewhere. There are inventory management machines that not only calculate accurate inventory numbers but they can also calculate precise sell by date and location on products.
- Costly end-of-year write-offs. No more unexpected costs at the end of the year. Find a management system that allows for easy organization of all budget expenses. This will allow for less stress at the end of the year and more time to reflect on all the positives. What many warehouse administrators, logistic departments, small business controllers and even accounting teams may not consider is the business value realized from an integrated accounting and inventory management system. Businesses can’t afford to lose money on costly end of year write-offs and utilizing an inventory management system has the potential to save thousands. Inventory management is about knowing exactly where and how many of an item you have available. To ensure that you aren’t spending more than you need to be; it may be time to invest in an inventory management system.
- Time spent looking for lost inventory. Don’t spend any more time looking for lost inventory. There are tracking systems available that will log and keep track of every single item that has been shipped. To err is human nature, but you can avoid error when you use a management system. There is an increased chance of error if businesses are using spreadsheets and keeping track of products manually. Not only can this take up a significant amount of time, information can easily be forgotten or missed. Many inventory reports include date purchased (or manufactured), sell by date, location and more, recording all the necessary information by hand can be a challenge, inevitably resulting in the over purchase or lack of inventory. One way businesses are combating human error is to implement an inventory management system. These systems can help keep track of necessary information, like sell-by date, automatically uploading the correct information into one central database in real time. This helps companies stay on top of the amount of inventory they currently have available, in turn helping them to order/manufacture more products if needed.
Manually tracking inventory is a way of the past. It’s time to upgrade your businesses software and join the 20th century. Doing so will only result in more money saved, improved record keeping, easily located inventory and time saved. Consider implementing on of the many inventory solutions available to businesses who sell or manufacture inventory. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised by the results.