If you own or manage a retail or wholesale business, keeping up with inventory is one of the most time-consuming tasks you’ll have to deal with on a daily basis. A good inventory system is essential for business organization, growth, sales and profits.
A good inventory system can make business management and sales simpler and faster. You will be able to track, organize and distribute your products much easier with a marking and coding system.
Product Tracking – Track specific products and find out which products sell faster and more often. You can also track low selling items and slow moving products with sales and markdowns.
Customer Service – Avoid running low on product inventory with faster reorders and replacements. You can determine if an item is in stock, locate it quicker, and locate out-of-stock items much quicker.
Financial Management – Keep track of products and sales easier to manage your business finances. Financial management is critical for your business analysis, sales and income projection, and future growth.
Theft Control – Track all movement of your inventory to assess loss. Without a good inventory system, it’s almost impossible to determine know if missing items are misplaced or stolen.
There are many types of inventory tracking systems on the market which are affordable and easy to use. Many systems let you print and read bar code labels, print invoices and receipts, and provide detailed statistics and reports. When using a package inventory system, you can’t always use stock numbers that tie an item to a specific product or vendor. Although you can look up the information in your system, it’s not readily transparent from a stock number. If you’re helping a customer, you may not have the time to chase it down without causing delay for your customer. This confusion and delay could cost you sales.
A database program can handle most descriptive product codes, but they will require more computer skills that a package inventory system. You will also have to develop some type of system for statistics and reports. If you don’t use a package system or database program, you can use a card system with pre-printed inventory cards, but card systems are more time-consuming since you have to enter a description, item code, net price, retail price, and supplier on each card. For quick, easy, efficient tracking, a marking and coding system like the Reiner jetstamp is a good, affordable option.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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