Inventory management techniques and tools

Then, to maximize its benefits for your organization, make sure you have the tools you need to make it as easy as possible. Browse hundreds of articles , containing an amazing number of useful tools, techniques, and best practices. Many readers tell us they would have paid consultants for the advice in these articles. Sign up with your email to receive updates from our blog. Clients and results. More Customers. Cristian Maradiaga. King Ocean. Book a Live Demo.

How to transition from paper and excel to eInvoicing. How AP can improve relationships with your key suppliers. How to capture early payment discounts and avoid late payment penalties. How better management in AP can give you better flexibility for cash flow management. Download Free Copy. Written by Keith Murphy 16 min read. Download PDF. Minimum Order Quantity Minimum order quantity MOQ is the lowest set amount of stock that suppliers are willing to sell.

Just-in-time Inventory management provides a variety of benefits, including: Less obsolete and outdated or spoiled inventory Reducing waste and increasing efficiency by minimizing or eliminating warehousing and stockpiling while maximizing inventory turnover Decreasing costs related to insurance and rent by reducing your inventory Identifying and fixing production errors faster because production happens on a smaller and more focused level Maintaining healthy cash flow by ordering stock only when it is necessary FIFO and LIFO FIFO and LIFO are accounting methods that are used to value inventory and report profitability.

Reorder Point Formula The reorder point formula alerts you when you should order more stock. ABC Analysis ABC analysis of inventory sorts your inventory into three categories according to how much they cost to hold and how well they sell.

B-Items: The mid-range items that sell regularly but cost more than A-Items to hold. C-Items: The rest of your inventory that makes up the bulk of your inventory costs but contributes the least to your bottom line. Lean Manufacturing System The lean manufacturing system is sometimes referred to as lean manufacturing or lean production. This inventory tracking system originated in the Toyota production system, which attempted to prevent: Muda: This refers to everything in your manufacturing process that creates waste or causes constraints on your ability to create a valuable product Mura: This refers to everything that creates an efficient and inconsistent workflows Muri: This refers to all loads or tasks that put too much stress on your machines or employees.

All lean manufacturing systems adhere to the following principles: Lean manufacturing delivers the most valuable product to the consumer. It maps out the steps and processes required to manufacture valuable products. It undergoes a process of ensuring all of your value-adding steps flow smoothly without bottlenecks, delays, or interruptions. Products are built using a just-in-time basis, so materials are not stockpiled, and customers can receive their orders within weeks rather than months.

Lean thinking and process improvement is a core part of company culture. Batch Tracking You may also hear bats tracking called lot tracking. This inventory management technique comes with a variety of benefits, including: Improved supplier relationships Easy and fast recall Streamlined expiration tracking Fewer accounting errors from manual tracking 6 Sigma Also known as Six Sigma, This is a data-driven process that aims to reduce product defects down to Lean Six Sigma Lean Six Sigma is the fusion of Six Sigma with lean manufacturing to create a complete system that removes waste and reduces process variation to streamline production and optimize product output.

Consignment Inventory Consignment inventory refers to a business Arrangement where a vendor or wholesaler known as a cosigner agrees to give their goods to a cosine e, most often a retailer without the retailer paying for the goods upfront.

Perpetual Inventory Management You may sometimes hear Perpetual Inventory management referred to as a continuous inventory system. Manual reporting can be plagued by delays, errors, missing transactions, and undue burden on the workforce to collect and enter the data. Automated data collection, most often through barcode scans, removes much of the reporting burden, while greatly improving accuracy and timeliness of transactions. Inventory accuracy is very important to the effective planning and control of inventory.

Sadly, most inventory tracking systems are woefully inaccurate without an active and disciplined cycle counting system in place. Cycle counting replaces the cumbersome and error-prone periodic usually annual physical inventory count with a regular program of counting selected items so that more important items are counted more often that less important ones. The magic of cycle counting is that it provides a structure for identifying and eliminating the source of errors to improve accuracy in a sustainable way.

Cycle counting is usually set up using ABC analysis to identify the more important and less important items mentioned above. The next 30 percent B items account for 15 percent of the value and the remaining 50 percent, the C items, total five percent of annual value.

In addition to setting cycle counting frequency, ABC classifications should drive item location in the warehouse, lot sizing and safety stock rules, and other management parameters to put your focus on the items that matter, where you can get the most return for your investment. The primary focus of ERP is to improve customer service meeting demand while optimising resources including inventory and reducing costs.

While the inventory system provides critical information for the planning and execution systems within ERP , these functions return the favour by managing the use and replenishment of inventory to minimise shortages and lowering the overall inventory investment. The main aim of manufacturers is to earn more profit. Thus, he focuses on producing quality goods minimizing the cost. This ultimately leads to an increase in the demand for manufacturing resources viz. This is why inventory management proves significant in business.

You must take effective measures to ease inventory management. Thereby, increasing the productivity of goods. The measures comprise,. Our BooksPOS system will prove the best inventory management software for your business. In addition to this, our software syncs inventories and orders across all marketplaces. It can be your brick and mortar stores, e-commerce websites, and marketplaces. Over and above that, it adjusts your inventory whenever a sale happens.

Our system is easy-to-use and affordable as well. It allows you to manage all your operations in central, could-based software. Moreover, it provides you with semi-integrated secured P2PE point-to-point encryption payment options. BooksPOS offers you to run all your franchise stores seamlessly from any location. BooksPOS is a fully integrate and compatible solution for your retail.

No matter how big or small your business is, our system is compatible and has a solution to fit. It easily stands on your needs to the best above all.

BooksPOS lets you sync your inventory and orders. It unifies inventory from across many marketplaces. It includes offline retailers as well as e-commerce websites. Certainly, it helps save your time spent on manual work. You can manage your franchise stores and bill them on MRP discounts or allow revenue sharing. Also, track your brand profitability in real-time on the sales at your stores. BooksPOS never disappoints its customers when it comes to their fluency of work.

You can continue your operations even when there is no internet. Our systems opt-in to offline mode and syncs data whenever the internet establishes. Compel your customer to return back to your shops. Our software allows you to give redeemable loyalty points for shopping at your store. We manage to generate tax reports and financial statements. BooksPOS manages your accounting and creates compliant journal entries automatically.

It also generates automated delivery challans. Our inventory software is API friendly to the hilt. It integrates with your existing software for accounting, payments, shipping, and inventory management. It proves compatible with any existing software you have and syncs data with ease. We have trained our team to reach out to you at any hour of the day. Further, help you build the features you need in your system.

BooksPOS, the best inventory management software with the most efficient inventory management tools gave its users a great working experience. Finances Online awards our software under the titles,. Our software identifies key inventory at an instant. It keeps you updated about your accounting metrics with daily reports.

You can also keep your financial statements up-to-date using our software. We offer a deeply integrated payment system. Withal, we provide you with a single inventory for all your channels. You can use your single stock over many platforms. It can be your brick-and-mortar stores and several e-commerce websites.

After that, your order automatically places with your supplier. Further, you can also track the order through the stock summary report. Write to us now! Wal-Mart is an American multinational retail corporation. It operates a chain of department and grocery stores. The company was founded by Sam Walton in and incorporated on October 31 st , Have you ever thought about what inventory management tools they used to manage an inventory of such a gigantic business?

Aiming to meet the enormous demand, Walmart has implemented a Perpetual Inventory System. It enables a continuous balance of inventory. Moreover, it ensures that the stock is enough to keep customers satisfied. This system helps to track goods throughout the supply chain. Further, it ultimately helps Walmart to get the right product into the right store at the right time. Along with the perpetual system, Walmart conducts periodic physical inventory counts.

Mostly, it happens at the end of their fiscal year to ensure the accuracy of its Perpetual Inventory records. The goal for the physical count is to determine,. Hence, Walmart keeps track of its inventory using a perpetual inventory management tools and techniques. Besides, it aids with a powerful POS system and other devices.

Managing inventory without a stock manager is like exercising in futility. Managing wares is a work of responsibility. You need a dedicated and responsible stock manager for your inventory management. Software is an efficient source to minimize your burden and manual work.

To make your techniques profitable, you will need a stock manager. Not necessarily all software is expensive. Some might cost you like a thousand dollars or even more. But our BooksPOS software is affordable for all scales of business.

Managing stocks with spreadsheets is time-consuming and requires the pain of manual work. Moreover, you cannot see how your products are selling. So, spreadsheets are not a good way for managing your inventory. You can try our BooksPOS inventory software that offers you cloud-based solutions. It will help you save your time and labor spent on spreadsheets. Yes, we offer deeply integrated POS software.

It allows you to unify inventory from all across your working platforms. It may be offline and e-commerce marketplaces. Need more help in choosing the best inventory management software? Your Name required. Your Email required. Your Message. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Automated page speed optimizations for fast site performance. Table of Contents. Do we need a stock manager for inventory management? Or software and techniques are enough? Is Inventory management tools built-in software expensive?

Cannot we use spreadsheets for inventory management? Does BooksPOS allow multi-channel integration? Related Posts 01 Feb. What are other essential re. What is POS software? The only guide you need. Learn ev. Leave a Comment Cancel reply. Recent Posts How to increase sales in. What is Bricks-and-Click. Order Management in Reta. How to bring your brick.