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[09/07/2010] Why Track Inventory
How to Track Inventory
Inventory can be defined as the entire as all material and products held by a company or business. This includes raw material required for production and all the finished and unfinished goods not yet sold. Inventory held by the business from its liquid asset base, since it can be converted into cash easily. Inventory is also a term used for a detailed list of these items, their date of manufacturing and price.
Why Track Inventory
Keeping track of inventory is one of the biggest challenges for a business because an inability to safeguard inventory items will lead to losses. Analysts believe that failure to keep track of inventory is why man businesses fail. On the other hand, a good inventory system will provide valuable information about all the items in stock, what been ordered, its arrival date and what has been sold. Thus, a good inventory system enables businesses to replenish stocks hit a certain level, without having to hold idle stocks for a long period of time, keep track of fast moving and slow moving products, doing this will help to highlight slower moving products, allowing you to get these moving to help keep cash flowing in
Ways of Tracking Inventory
Inventory can be tracked in various ways. A business can devise its own system of tracking inventory, or have professional accountants create an effective system for tracking it. The market is full of software that eases the setup of an inventory tracking system. Listed below are some of the inventory tracking systems that can be used:
- The use of tags is one of the easiest methods of tracking inventory. This entails fixing a tag with a unique number for tracking purposes, on each piece of merchandise, keeping a record book, and adding all the tracking numbers to it. The tag can be removed once the item is sold and stuck to the record book. Periodically these tags can be used to keep track of what is sold and what is left on the shelves.
- Manually keeping track of all sales receipts and delivery vouchers is another method of tracking inventory. This would first need a listing of all finished products stored and crossing out all those that have been sold.
- Small businesses purchase specialized inventory tracking software. These require minimal effort after loading the software to the host system. Inventory control packages come with details on setup and operation and there is no looking back once it begins to function accurately.
- Barcodes are one of the most popular methods of tracking inventory. Barcode systems come with software that manages them and when used in conjunction with a handheld barcode scanner you are ensured fast inventory checks. It simply requires generating barcodes for all products and incorporating the details on the computer. All the work of tracking the sale of the product and the reduction in stocks held are all managed by the software.
- POS or point of sale systems also enable inventory tracking. This system entails keeping track of a product at the time it is sold, and updates inventory records immediately. This maintains records accurately, and makes report generation easy on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
- Manual tracking of inventory is perhaps the toughest in the current business world. If a business opts for this, they would first have to move and check all that is already in stock, make lists and then devise a method of updating records as and when sales take place and also add reminders about when to reorder certain products.
- Using RFID or radio frequency identification tags to keep track of stocks. The RFID tag is a microchip that contains all the vital information about the products and can be tracked easily at any and every point of the supply chain. This is the inventory tracking method of the future, sophisticated, accurate and reliable.
Benefits of Inventory Tracking
Inventory tracking has led to major cost savings as businesses have been able to curtail losses, provide products without losing customers by finding adequate stocks to deliver rather than regretting lack of stock when orders arrive, reducing storage by ordering raw materials etc only when stocks are running low, and reducing the time for which inventory levels are maintained at a particular level. This system has increased overall efficiency in business and has eased report generation and data analysis to make improvements in the business at all stages. Barcode technology is being increasingly adopted for inventory tracking and for the entire supply chain by a very large number of businesses. Both barcodes and RFID need specialized hardware and software incorporated into the computer system to be able to function as part of the system.
Neil Jones is head of marketing for eMobileScan, specializing in handheld barcode scanners from the world’s leading manufacturers we can offer the best solution for any application.