Regardless of how you’re going about tracking and (attempting to manage) your inventory, ultimately, you’re counting and recording. Simple enough, right? What should be simple and straightforward often turns into a knotted mess that’s difficult at best to untangle. If inventory tracking is taking longer than normal, it might be time to examine your methods and procedures. If inventory tracking has regressed into a terrible mess with no daylight in sight, it may be time to give your tracking system an overhaul.
Inventory automation
- Too Much Inventory
While you may have a great product that usually flies off the shelves, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. If your warehouse (or other site) is full of stock that’s been sitting, collecting dust, you might be suffering from a case of excess inventory. And, with too much inventory, you’re probably tying up capital and ultimately wasting money.
- Large Year End Adjustments
If your CPA keeps surprising you with large inventory adjustments at the end of the year you should consider changing how you track inventory. It is difficult to make good decisions on what to buy and when to sell when you really don’t have an accurate count on your inventory.
- Manual Inventory Management
If you’re arming your staff with clipboards and pens to track your inventory, you’re sacrificing time without much hope of achieving accuracy or efficiency. Even if you had your entire staff at every location start tracking at the same time, you’d still be nowhere close to accurate. If you’re trying to track stock manually, you’re still on the outside looking in, and you’re definitely losing the efficiency battle. Your business is growing; you need the ability to track your products wherever you do business. Each location should be able to control its own pricing, reordering and stocking characteristics.
- Using Inventory as a Safety Net
Sure, you never want to run out of stock. You shudder at the thought of not being able to fill an order. So, you pull a complete 180 and ensure that you never run out of product by stockpiling. End result: that mythical inventory safety net. Still, you never want to stockpile just for the sake of it. If you’re going to maintain a safety stock or buffer, you’ll need to pay extra close attention to your inventory levels to ensure you’re never dangerously depleted or overstocked at any time.
- When You’re Not Counting Everything
Unless your business stocks and sells only finished products or one type of component, you’re also charged with the task of knowing your inventory levels for various components. As a result, your counts will likely include finished products, components, raw materials and spare parts. From raw material to spare parts and finished products, efficient inventory management involves consistently tracking component and raw material levels, and making adjustments when these items are converted (or assembled into finished products). The components that make up the finished products hold value, cost money and take up space, just like their finished product counterparts.
Track and manage your inventory
Once you’ve made the decision to convert your inventory tracking to an automated system, look to a cloud-based solution to take care of your inventory tracking and operational needs. Why not implement a software solution that tracks for you? Harness the power of Gravity Software® (Gravity). With true multi-location inventory tracking capabilities, Gravity gives you the ability to track, control and manage your products wherever you do business. From Warehouse # 1 to your assembly plant to your retail store, each location can control its own pricing, reordering and stocking characteristics.
Real-time insight into your inventory so you can:
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Locate and track quantities of specific products or components
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Monitor your total inventory or drill down by location
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Analyze your inventory to maximize your profitability
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Provide real-time available to promise with reliable lead times
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Know when to reorder and when to hold off
By utilizing the Microsoft Power Platform (aka Dynamics 365), Gravity makes it simple for businesses to operate from anywhere, at any time without all the startup costs associated with other accounting applications. Learn more and schedule your online demo today. Just say GO!
Gravity Software
Better. Smarter. Accounting.
