What You Should Know About Retail Inventory Management

Whether you have an Etsy Shop or have opened your own small business, when your company suddenly experiences a surge of growth it can be hard to keep up with stock and manage your inventory.

What exactly is inventory management? Inventory management refers to goods that you keep in stock for sale to customers. Every retail store has its own warehouse of stock to replenish supplies when existing stock depletes.

Unless your products are made to order ( i.e., you run your business based off commission ) then you’ll need to keep constant track of your sales and supply in order to ensure that you are able to sell your product when the customer wants it.

Gain Valuable Insights 

If your business is quickly growing, it may be time to invest in a retail inventory management system and software that can make your life much easier. For instance, Sage Software can provide you with an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system that can manage a number of aspects of your business, including your inventory.

By using Cloud technology, Sage’s ERP solutions can be easily integrated into your business and is accessible via multiple devices, even when you’re not at the office. Inventory management software can help you support, track, and automate inventory management processes store-wide. Everything from sales and returns to stock ordering, receiving, and unit tracking, is managed within a single system, meaning that a number of processes can be automated. 

With metrics of your choice you can monitor product levels to help you know exactly what to buy and when. Your ERP system can automatically receive and send your forecast data so that you can focus on analyzing the data instead of putting it all together. With this technology you can reduce time spent on manual tasks and instead work on creating solutions for the optimal investment required to achieve target fill rates and reduce stockouts.

Effects of a Stockout 

A stockout happens when inventory runs out of a certain item and production has to be stopped or a customer order will not be fulfilled. There are a number of consequences to not being able to fulfill a customer’s order that can be costly to your business.

For instance, if the customer is willing to wait for the item, you will have to move around your production schedule and incur production costs from the adjustments – especially when it comes to rescheduling with your vendors and/or manufactures. This can also have a domino effect on your other products as their production becomes delayed.

If the customer doesn’t want to wait for the product they will cancel their order and you’ve just lost yourself a sale. But worse yet is that the customer might experience a loss of satisfaction and not want to shop with you again.

Don’t Get Caught Unprepared 

With the right insights and forecasts provided by your inventory management system you can ensure that a stockout never occurs to begin with. Make sure to consider the benefits of ERP software and other systems that you can implement into your business to ensure optimal performance.