Is It Time to Track Inventory?

When it comes to inventory management of a business, controlling inventory is an essential tool. Inventory control involves tracking of inventory, which gives a lot of benefits to the company in relation to the making of management decisions and strategies .In particular, business industries dealing with retail inventory requires the use of systems in inventory management, like the perpetual inventory system.

Presented on this website is information pertaining to when and how to properly and to effectively track inventory of your business after occurrence of sale and purchase transactions.

When to Track your Inventory

The first question for any business before adapting to an inventory system is the question, “Is it time to track inventory?” There are points a company must consider leading to the integration of an inventory management system in the business, as follows:

• Company Inventory Purchases and Processes – Identify if your business follows a made to order business transaction or keep lots of inventory to have different available options for the customers to choose from.

• Coverage of Inventory in Revenue – You will have to resort to tracking your inventory, most especially if the inventory you store covers a large percentage on your sales.

• Frequency of Lost Sales – Increase in occurrence of loss due to out-of-stock inventory raises the need of an inventory management to track it and to increase efficiency in monitoring levels for timely restocking procedures.

• Overselling and Inventory Shrinkage – Purposes of most inventory templates in PDF format on this website presents an outline on how to avoid overselling as well as inventory shrinkage in a business. Once you face these problems, take into consideration incorporating an inventory management.

• Nature of Inventory in Storage – The free inventory templates shows different types of inventory outlined with inventory sheets used for tracking inventory. If your business is into production of goods, you might want to consider applying an inventory system especially on the materials used for production.

Ways to Track Inventory for Small Business

As a small business, there are a few tools you can use to manage or track an inventory. Do so with the aid of printable inventory templates in Excel and inventory templates in DOC or follow the tips below:

• Arrange and update product and supplier information consistently. Maintain a complete record of the products you buy and the suppliers you buy them from.

• Procure an accurate purchase order for your inventory. Purchase orders becomes a guide for you and your supplier which makes it essential to write items on the order with clarity.

• Follow an effective stockroom layout for your inventory. Once the items are delivered, categorize items by tag or code and arrange them in the storage in the most efficient way possible for smooth operations.

• Conduct physical inventory at least once within a given period. Aside from recording accurate sales, it is also beneficial for you to conduct an actual count of inventory every end of a given period.

• Compare book records and actual inventory. There may be shortages or overages once you compare book and physical inventory record rising the need for an investigation.

Inventory management entails proper recording and tracking of the inventory to result to having efficient and smooth sales transactions. With the aid of inventory templates, evaluate your inventory policies and start tracking your inventory to avoid losses and increase gains.

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