It’s easy to forget that having too much surplus inventory is the same as having money sitting on your shelves or on your pallets or wherever it is that you store inventory. Having money sit on your shelves doesn’t help you any; in fact, it’s detrimental to your profits. With a good parts inventory strategy, however, you can minimize this issue and make sure that your inventory is working for you like it should be.
With a quality parts inventory control system, you can track what you have and how quickly it comes and goes. Having this information will, over time, show you the patterns and trends that are associated with your inventory; eventually you’ll learn how to use these figures to adjust your reorders and hit that inventory “sweet spot” that falls just between running out of inventory and having excess inventory.
The “sweet spot” is important because it means that you’re maximizing your sales to their full potential. You’re not selling out, creating backorders and unhappy customers, and you’re not sitting on excess inventory, increasing the chances of inventory damage, shrinkage, and products becoming obsolete. In addition, money that’s unnecessarily tied up in inventory could be used more efficiently elsewhere.
If you’re like most businesses, you’ll eventually find inventory in your warehouse that has gone unrecorded. This is not a good thing for several reasons: 1) your employees are not doing their jobs and recording the inventory as it comes in, 2) your receiving process and/or inventory counting process is flawed, and 3) you have money invested in inventory that you didn’t even know about. A good inventory system will prevent this from occurring.
If you have these problems and realize that you need better parts inventory control, you may be thinking that you can turn to spreadsheets for help. While spreadsheets are tempting, however, they’re likely to cause problems when you use them to track inventory. This is because spreadsheets are inherently error-prone due to their manual entry set up – people are in a hurry or get distracted and accidentally place a number in the wrong cell or delete a cell. These mistakes aren’t on purpose, but, once made, can be impossible to sort out. A software parts inventory control system is far superior.
By using inventory control software, the pressure is off of you to know how the program is actually run – all you have to know is how to use it. Today’s software offers user dashboards that are simple to use, walking you through the steps necessary to keep your inventory under control. Software is also created to be customizable, which allows you to see your data any way you want.
To find out more about inventory control and the software solutions that make it easier and more efficient, please contact Acumen Information Systems today.
