While doing a business inventory may not be your favourite job in the world, it is vital as the management of your stock should be the bread and butter of what your company does. As well as what you can be doing right, there are plenty of mistakes to avoid along the way. Sometimes, focusing on sidestepping the key errors can make all the difference in ensuring that you effectively manage your inventory. Here are a few of the most common to avoid.
Leave it too long between checks
One of the main issues with an inventory is that people dislike doing it so much that they end up in a situation where they are leaving it longer and longer between checks. Alternatively, they may not do it at regular intervals, which means that it is much harder to get an overall picture of what is going on at your company. One way of getting around this is by automating the system to give a continual picture using Zoho ERP by ZBrains. This can make it much easier to make key business decisions.
Not organising your stockroom
When it comes to doing an inventory, the whole process is going to be an awful lot more challenging if you are doing it in an unorganised environment. While in the first instance this may mean giving your stockroom a tidy, in the long run, it should mean that you have a better system of organisation in place. This way, you don’t have to keep tidying up on a sporadic basis. Instead, you have more sustained organisation that stands the test of time.
Not properly training staff
Since your staff members are the ones most likely to be carrying out the inventory checks for you, making sure that they are effectively trained should become part of what you are doing. Not only do you need to train them to do the inventory in the first place, but you also need to make sure that they know the reasons why this is so important to the financial health of the company – and therefore their own interests as well.
Ordering too much or too little stock
Hopefully, as a result of all the other actions that you have put in place, you should have a much better system of inventory management. This way, it can help you in stopping over ordering or underordering. Both can be potentially problematic. If you have too much stock, it could end up that you need to throw it away or alternatively, it could be taking up space in your warehouse and is wasted money. If you don’t have enough stock, you won’t be able to send out enough orders and customers are much more likely to become frustrated and not stick with your business.
A system of effective inventory management can truly make all the difference to the financial health of your business. Avoiding these mistakes will make it much more likely that your ambition will become a reality.
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