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Do you feel as though your business inventory is all over the place? If so, then now is the time for you to make a change. Here you will find some tips that will help you to stay on top of things while also rocketing your bottom line.
Prioritizing Inventory
If you can categorize your business inventory into various priority groups, this will help you understand what you need to order more of. This is very important to your business as it means you will not be overspending on goods you don’t need. Ideally, you should be categorizing your inventory into A, B and C groups. When you have done this, items in group A should be higher-ticket items that you don’t move as much of. The C category is for lower-cost items that have a lot of turnover. B would be anything that falls in between. If you can do this, you will soon find that you can get a good result out of your business inventory while adopting a solid system that works for you. If you don’t have the room to store everything, then now is the time for you to explore business storage solutions if you can.
Track your Product Information
It is so important that you do what you can to keep the product information for the items that you have within your inventory. The information should really include suppliers, barcode data, and even SKUs as well. You may well consider tracking the cost of every item over time so you can make sure that you are aware of things that may change. This could include items that change in seasonality or even scarcity.
Do an Audit
Some companies like to do a comprehensive count of what they have yearly. This is great, but if this is not going to work for you, then you can try and do it monthly or even weekly. Either way, it doesn’t matter how often you do it because you have to do a count of your inventory as often as possible so you can make sure that it matches up with what you think you have.
Analyze your Suppliers
If you have a supplier who is not reliable, then this can cause major issues for you and your inventory. If you know that you have a supplier who is always late with deliveries or if they are always shorting you on your orders, then now is the time for you to try and take some action. First, you must discuss issues with your supplier so you can get to the root of the issue. If you do not do this, you may find your job harder, but all of this can be avoided.
The 80/20 Rule
One good rule would be for you to ensure that 80% of your general profit comes from 20% of your stock. If possible, you have to prioritize your inventory, and you also need to do a complete lifecycle of your items too. If you can do this with the items you sell weekly or even monthly, then this will help you more than you think.
You may also like: 8 Questions to Ask Before you Buy an Inventory Management Software
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