Inventory management software can streamline your inventory flow, keep products moving, and keep your backend in order. It is an invaluable tool for managing your products. If you fulfill many orders in any given day, you have to have some kind of system in place to track what you have, when, and where it is.

Inventory management software is often integrated through automation. It is the great big secret of the best inventory management practices, and it saves you a lot of time and money. You are not stuck needlessly tracking and monitoring your inventory at a micro level.

But can you take this too far? Is it possible that you can actually not manage enough?

It is a peculiar question, especially when so much discussion around inventory management software revolves around implementing automation. But the secret to automation is knowing when and how to use it. Go overboard and you can make costly mistakes.

Alerts and Approvals

How closely should you monitor your inventory? The big part of the answer has to do with alerts and approvals. It works as follows. You can set a par level for a product. This may pertain to the lowest count you are willing to allow in your active stock. When an item hits a par level – let’s say three in stock for the purpose of this exercise – you receive an alert. The you in this case could be any staff member who you best think should be informed of this stock level.

A party is now alerted to the par level. So how can they respond? Administrators can set up an approval process within the software management. In short, the system will automatically reorder the product only if it meets the condition of approval. Whoever received the alert can approve a reorder in a single click. But the important step is the approval.

It helps answer the question of how closely stock levels should be monitored. In this example, you are only alerted once you approve the order. Full automation would mean the order is made regardless of approval.

Why is Full Automation (Sometimes) Bad?

“Full” automation in this example could have some frustrating ramifications. There are definitely some circumstances that may apply.

• The reorder price per product is exorbitant, confirming an automated reorder on a product you may no longer make a profit on
• The item is on a waiting list, causing you to possibly pay for a reorder you may not receive for months.
• You over-exhaust a particular financial account
• You forgot to turn off the reorder
• Because you automated the reorder, you can fall victim to any of the above scenarios.

With alerts and approvals, you are buffering yourself from a potential unwanted reorder. It is a great way to watch over your stock when it matters, but still keep a healthy amount of automation on the table.

Only you can determine how close you want to watch your stock levels. If you only have one product, it may be easy. If you are juggling hundreds of products with distinct seasonal slants and variable pricing, close inventory management could be a huge time waster. You need to consider what is most important and what you can automate, and create a healthy balance between it all.

We can help answer a lot of questions regarding inventory management, including how and what to automate and to what degree. Contact our team for further details about inventory control. Our DEAR Inventory system can help you create productive automated processes, but with reasonable checks and balances so you can avoid many of the situations above.

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Is Low Inventory Okay to Build Demand? How to Manage Low Inventory in a Competitive Marketplace

How to Determine the Right Inventory Level for Every Different Product

Some enterprises are fortunate enough to only have to deal with one main product. They aren’t flooded with a wide range of products across a huge spectrum. Add different variables to every product and the whole thing can quickly become a mess. Our heart goes out to every clothing company in the country.

So as a smaller-sized enterprise with big ambitions, how do you manage all these different products? How do you know what to stock, and at what level, to maximize profitability and keep your inventory manageable? This is one of the many secrets of good inventory management, and how inventory management software can ease the burdens of daily management.

Where do you start?

Too Low and Too High

We first need to counter one of the main arguments of precise inventory management. Why can’t you just stock it all? Get a high count to reduce the price-per-product. It will sell eventually, right?

For clothing, perhaps. There isn’t an obvious shelf life for most apparel, so this approach might actually play well. For most other product types, shelf life is a serious issue. But perhaps just as importantly is space. No matter how impervious a product is to natural degradation, it still takes up space on a shelf.

If you stock too little, you aren’t satisfying customer demand. If you stock too much, your shelves are wasted with unwelcomed and unmoved product.

Par Level

You have to address your par level. Different businesses look at par level in different ways, but it is basically the minimum amount of a product you are willing to have on your shelf at any given time. What is the lowest acceptable inventory level for that product?

There are many ways you can determine your par level per product. We look at a few areas you can consider.

• The size of the actual product: How much space is it taking up in your warehouse?
• Seasonal trends: Is it something that sells year-round?
• “Add-on-ability:” Is this a product that could be easily “added on” to another to encourage a sale. For example, stickers, poster, or a similar smaller-sized complementary product can be healthily stocked at all times.
• Restocking speed: Is this a product you can get back quickly if you miscalculate the inventory you need? If so, you might want to stock up when you can.

Setting your par levels correctly can be challenging, especially early on. Software for inventory management can help you review metrics and reduce your trial-and-error period.

Par Levels Vary – a Lot

Par levels are not created equal. In business reality, some products may need to go out of stock. This could be to create demand or cater to a very seasonal selling cycle. Others can have high par levels, especially if sales on that product are sporadic, unpredictable, and at the whims of cultural trends. You want to have a high inventory count here to capitalize on that big break.

While it may take some practice, awareness of your market will really help you nail the right par levels.

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4 Quick Tips Towards Improving Your Inventory Flow

Price Forecasting and Inventory Management, Making Bold Predictions and Big Steps Forward

Inventory management requires juggling lots of small tasks. While inventory management software can ease these burdens, there are still some things all business owners need to do to facilitate a good working order of their inventory.

Utilizing the ABC’s can go a long way in detailing exactly how, where, and why inventory is stored and managed. We take a brief look the ABC strategy and how to make the most of this fundamental game changer.

What is ABC Inventory?

Everyone has an underlying strategy, whether it is organizing everything in a single Excel sheet or just shoving everything in a giant warehouse. There is at least some method to the madness…probably.

But the ABC method streamlines things at the most basic level. ABC Inventory organizes your contents into three essential categories: A, B, and C.

• A Items: These are items which are sought almost daily. A items are bestsellers. They are sold quickly and either don’t take up a lot of long-term space because of this turnover or they are stocked right “upfront” and are easy to access.
• B Items: B items are sold regularly, but there is a higher cost related to them. Perhaps they are larger items that require a lot of warehouse space. Perhaps they are popular seasonal items that may be burdensome nine months out of the year but make back any their space costs during the peak season.
• C Items: C items are the remaining inventory. These items can be bulky, they usually don’t sell well, and they can spread out all over the warehouse. Common C items are seasonal, declared a specialty, part of small or limited runs, or overstock.

The above is the basic breakdown of the ABC Analysis. Inventory management software consequently helps organize inventory into one of these three core categories.

How Does it Help?

The ABC approach helps divide inventory based largely on how often it is accessed. But how does this help in practice?

It helps by easing inventory management practices. More specifically, the ABC method helps owners identify the flow of their products. If you identify a product as A, you know it needs to be reordered more frequently. You can make proactive steps towards stocking these items regularly. B category items can safely be moved to less immediately-accessible areas of the warehouse. This allows you to make room for A category items and also keeps inventory stock at the proper level and location.

A proper utilization of the ABC method ultimately reduces obsolete inventory. Owners have a much better idea of what items are regular stock and what items can be pushed aside. This can help identify areas of marketing potential (such as special sales on C products) and items which can remain future focus areas (A items are bestsellers).

The location can help expedite work orders and even decrease working capital. You only stock what is needed to the closest approximation. It keeps more money fluid and less tied up to (sometimes) needless inventory orders.

Inventory turnover is tighter, allowing for a maximum utilization of the warehouse space you have. You aren’t buried in extra space (and paying higher rent), and you aren’t scrambling to find inventory you need to fulfill orders because it’s buried in obsolete stock.

While many inventory managers have a general idea of what item belongs in what category, they don’t often actively practice it. Make a habit of identifying the status of your inventory. Know it inside and out so you can make informed decisions about what you should do with it- and where it should go.

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4 Quick Tips Towards Improving Your Inventory Flow

Price Forecasting and Inventory Management, Making Bold Predictions and Big Steps Forward

The secret to growing faster and smarter is automation. It is the crux of DEAR inventory management solutions, especially at enterprise levels.

Clients who can properly capture automated workflow funnels can really see how fine-tuned and perfected inventory management can get.

Our automation module consists of:

• Notifications
• Tasks
• Report Scheduling
• Reminders
• Workflow Automation

Our system gives you a full set of tools to automate any and all tasks you need within your workflow.

Automation will get you a few steps further a whole lot faster.

Finding and Applying Automation

You achieve automation by creating a new task funnel. These different automated funnels can help you optimize the system as you need.

You can create workflows within the settings. Here, you can create, edit, and review all the workflows you have crafted. This module will help you anticipate future changes and ease daily frustrations from your team. Allow the platform to do the heavy lifting. It is more than a tool for tracking some basic numbers. Enterprises who harness the potential of automation can really see the impact. Their time is placed elsewhere. The team can focus on growth outside, and not needless daily maintenance.

Some of our clients use automation to require management approval if an order exceeds a certain size. Others will create minimum reorder levels so a specific item never dips below a certain point. The same can be created for maximum orders to keep inventory at management levels all across the board.

You can apply all of the above, from task lists to prompts and reminders, to advanced workflow funnels to daily alerts, to take automate control.

More Help

Automation can ease burdens and reduce manual time spent on repetitive and common tasks.

If you need any additional details, you can review our comprehensive videoon how to set up a workflow automation for sale. This will provide an analysis of where you can set up an automated workflow. Our follow-up videocaptures more of the nuances within workflow management, giving you a lens into the backend of managing, editing, and reviewing your sales workflows.

Both videos give you the finest entry-point for getting in and around workflow automation. This will be a pivotal area for elevating your experience. Capture the highest level of inventory flow. Scale your operations as needed to anticipate much-deserved and earned company growth. Automation readies you for any kind of future.

Take full advantage of our automation module. See the possibilities unfold as you work smarter and grow faster.

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5 Inventory Management Habits You Should Establish Now to Save You in the Future

Price Forecasting and Inventory Management, Making Bold Predictions and Big Steps Forward

The best inventory managers didn’t earn the status by buying the highest-quality software on the planet and calling it a day. They worked to establish many habits, and continued to fine-tune their efforts to keep an impeccable track of the inventory on hand.

Inventory management can be improved substantially by applying some very informative and helpful habits. We recommend the below habits to improve inefficiencies and create the best possible inventory flow.

1. Apply Special Promotions coinciding with Stock Levels

There’s often a stock level that is just a little too disproportioned. It is either too high to justify or too low, causing problems for your inventory levels. You can always settle on promotional deals and discounts which play into the current stock levels. Make a habit of adding promotions, even small ones, to keep your audience based engaged. While this is definitely a marketing priority, it should be something inventory managers look at as well. They can recommend special promotions to help ease high stock.

2. Review Forecasting and Trends

What is happening in the industry and how is it impacting the business? We recommend reviewing the larger aspects of the industry regularly. Take a look at societal trends as well as local community trends. Account for them in stock management. This is an extremely useful habit which can help you capitalize on social movements or take advantage of a very specific change in supply and demand.

3. Audit Your Stock

While inventory management software can be very accurate, it always helps to get in there and audit the stock. Make sure the numbers match and make sense. Human error can often compound and cause substantial problems if you don’t take the effort to double-check periodically.

4. Review the Sales Analytics

Information is more valuable than any best guess. It usually dictates the decision-making process. Sales analytics from inventory management software can really help you untangle a story which once seemed complicated. Make a habit of reviewing the analytics with things like daily stock updates, low stock triggers, unpredictable boosts in sales of a certain product, and more.

5. Review Inventory Quality

Make a habit of reviewing the shelf life of your products before they expire or degrade beyond sale. Many small businesses will remove bad product once it is already bad. This is often a lost opportunity. For example, preemptive searches can help you push a promotion to product about to expire. It can help you tackle the inventory issue before it becomes a direct cut off your bottom line. If you are quick and habitual about it, you can retain tight quality control, avoid product loss, and make more money.

Of course, inventory management makes keeping to these habits a whole lot easier. Contact our team for more details. Utilize inventory management software which saves you time and money, yet remains extremely intuitive. We want to provide you a platform that grows your business, making the transition to it clean and easy.

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Price Forecasting and Inventory Management, Making Bold Predictions and Big Steps Forward

Ease of Use: What Does it Mean and How Do You Find it When Exploring Inventory Management Software?

On the surface, solid inventory management should be able to offer some basic details. What is the current stock? What is the value of the inventory?

These two things are relatively basic, and available in most inventory management platforms. But good software goes above the basics and offers something far more valuable. With some excellent features and more nuanced data, businesses can make bold predictions.

Perhaps the most valuable is price forecasting. Good price forecasters are like weather professionals. They use the information provided to make timely and accurate decisions. But they rarely resort to guessing. They have the resources to make informed decisions. We look at how price forecasting plays a role in inventory management.

Supply and Demand

Price forecasting is ruled by supply and demand. Whatever amount you set for a price should be dictated by supply and demand. Of course, these things are in a constant state of flux. Products inbound and outbound are affected by the variables of supply and demand.

Most small business leaders fundamentally understand how supply and demand can affect the price for their products, but what does that mean in practice? It is not necessarily something that will just happen naturally. It takes someone with a strong sense of price forecasting to make adjustments to maximize profit margins.

Scenarios for Price Changes

A price adjustment should be justified by the marketplace. There are some very clear ways small businesses can make sensible market price adjustments.

• Seasonal Products: Shorts won’t usually garner the same price during the winter compared to the summer. Seasonal products change price cyclically. Brand suppliers should strongly consider this by having in mind a standard winter rate and a standard summer rate.

• Supply Costs; Supply costs can change, also affected by marketplace supply and demand. This can have a “trickle” effect for products which rely on other products to exist. It is always important to look not just at the product but the resources it uses. For example, inventory managers may look at the cost of shorts, but their attention should also be placed on fabric and textile costs.

• Trends: Inventory managers and price forecasters can keep a very close eye on local and national trends. This applies to all industries. There are trends sweeping companies from auto manufacturers to toy suppliers. Can you capitalize on these trends?

Price changes have to be consciously evaluated. If they are done without justification, it could anger a core audience. If they are done too loosely, sales could be lost.

Good price forecasting is a really valuable skill to have. It requires a patience and comprehensive understanding of the marketplace. It may be easy to just increase the price when supply is low and decrease when it goes up. But as any good business leader has experienced, it is never that simple. Inventory management can help small businesses pull records and reports to understand the current status of supply and demand. If used properly, they can make bold predictions to lean into the ebb and flow of the marketplace.

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Ease of Use: What Does it Mean and How Do You Find it When Exploring Inventory Management Software?

Three Things All Good Inventory Managers Must Take Control Of

Perhaps the most important thing to consider in any inventory management software is usability. If you are unable to effectively use the platform, you can’t hope to ever get a whole lot from it. It is more important than cost. It may even be more important than the list of features. It doesn’t matter of the program is free and it has every single feature you could ask for. If you don’t know how to use it, it might as well be an electronic brick.

How do you determine usability? Ease of use is a top thing you should look out for when selecting a platform. But usability is different for everyone.

Look Internally

What is your tech-savviness? Where are you coming from?

You will first want to determine a few things about your team to find inventory management most suitable to your needs. Think about the current level of software knowledge of your team and how that may impact usability. An extremely concise and streamlined platform may still be a sizable challenge to understand. Look at your own current knowledge and factor that into the decision.

Take the Time to Learn

Is there a willingness to learn the software?

This question has many different levels. For one, there may be an interest in learning, but there is a definite lack of time. As a leader, you may have to determine if you want to take the time and energy required to learn the platform. Is it worth it? You may find it more worthwhile to hire someone new or support another internally to take on the workload. All of this will inform your decision and help provide a basis for usability.

Streamlined

Usability will depend on some key software features. You will want to find a platform that encourages and promotes ease of use. We recommend three main places to look.

1. Explore the support system and its features
2. Find out what features you need. Don’t worry about a system that may be too big or too small for what you are doing
3. Find scalability. Can the software support you regardless of size, without you having to learn so many new things?

You want to purchase something you are confident you can handle. You aren’t going to buy a sports car to tend to the farm. You need software that can match your current business output and infrastructure.

Ultimately, you want a platform that can confidently provide you the backbone of support you need and the tools you require to excel. Nothing should be beyond your reach as far as learning the system. But you have to gauge the time commitment required and the cost-benefit to your business. Inventory management software can change the game. Learn about what you are getting into and embrace the process. You never know what kind of rewards you can reap by engaging with the softrware, building the team to tackle it, and improving your business.

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Three Things All Good Inventory Managers Must Take Control Of

3 Tips for Basic (Yet Organized) Inventory Management After Installing Software

Good inventory management is imperative for your business. Without managing the ins and outs of your business’ rotating door of inventory stock, you are left struggling to answer important questions about your business.

But the question remains: how? What is the best way to manage inventory as an inventory manager? What are the main roles you should act on as you manage the life of your business- the product.

We look at three key roles of any good inventory manager, and how wearing different hats can make or break your growth.

Know the Product In and Out

Managing the product properly requires more than a passing knowledge of the product. The manager responsible should be able to decipher many details of the product:

• What classification is the product?
• Does it have multiple SKU’s or variables?
• Are there different assemblies?
• Are there any current trends with the product to be aware of?

This will help inform the manager everything from where the product should be housed to when it should be reordered. Manager should fundamentally understand the product lines inside and out, making proactive decisions based on all the many things they know.

Know the Technology

It seems to make sense that inventory managers understand the technology, but it isn’t always so obvious. For one, many managers simply don’t. They know basic functionality, but have a hard time grasping the nuances of the modules and features. We are not talking about spreadsheets, of course. Any small business that wants to remain competitive should have inventory management software- and management who is willing and able to learn it.

Make Predictions

A big part of managing inventory is making predictions. This requires an understanding of the daily interactions and the whole big picture. In short, it has everything to do with forecasting.

For example, a company is offering a sale. It is a BOGO product. Now it is the responsibility of the inventory manager to order more. But the question is, how much more? Double? Triple? Is there a seasonal demand already in place for the product. Perhaps the manager needs 10 times more.

The point is that the inventory manager needs to forecast, encompassing many different variables to consider their ordering habits. It is something that could potentially take a lot of practice and research, but it will pay off tremendously when managers can find those patterns.

The above example is just a single product. The big picture includes a whole array of things to consider. This includes storage location, scale, tools and equipment needed, staff members to handle flow, shipping, and so on. It really is a comprehensive approach, and something inventory managers should be more than happy to take on.

The addition of inventory management software could change things up dramatically for a small business. But if the company has a manager to tackle these issues, the transition will be far smoother. Consider finding or making adjustments to a dedicated individual or team who can accommodate massive new inventory expansion.

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3 Tips for Basic (Yet Organized) Inventory Management After Installing Software

Three Tips for Determining What Type of Inventory Management Platform You Need

A lot can be said about inventory management software, including what it can do, what it can’t, how to best use it, and what features should be upgraded to maximize efficiency.

But what can often get lost in the shuffle are the simple mechanics of inventory management. How do you get the most out of the system when you remove all the bells and whistles and get right to the core of inventory management?

This is what we are going to review today- the top three tips for clearly organizing your inventory management with software.

Note the Charts You Want

There is such a thing as too much information. You can have a wealth of reports sitting on your desk. But if all you ever do is review the stack in frustration (“I’ll get to it later”) there isn’t much point of having it.

Know what you want to track and how. What products are the best sellers? Make sure you prioritize a total cumulative sales chart. Do you have repeat customers? Compile a chart of for customer order numbers. You should prioritize the right kind of information so you aren’t buried in needless reports.

Revisit Your Product Categories

Take this opportunity to freshen up your product hierarchy and categories. Typically, small businesses have four main types of product categories in regards to inventory management: single item, assembly (requiring multiple components), family or nested, and bundled. The differences may be subtle, and you may not even need them all, but a clear set-up will be paramount for your continued success.

How often you rely on one over the other is entirely up to your business product structure. The point is to be familiar with them. Organize your products into areas which make sense and keep them that way. It’s not something you have to revisit often, or at all, if you manage to encompass the breadth of your product line simply and clearly.

Set Automations

If there is something you know you want to do, without a lot of compromise or adjustment, you should strive to automate it. The prime example with DEAR inventory management is the automatic restocking feature. This allows you to set a minimum stock count for a specific SKU. If the inventory goes lower, you reorder. No burden on you. No manual counting needed. It instantly tracks all stock levels, and automatically orders when needed based on the setting you provided.

This is an instant way to relieve time. Set up these automatic features so you aren’t struggling with going back into the platform more times than needed. Automations are practical, but also the most logical step forward for business growth.

DEAR inventory management helps get you the features you need to scale your operations, open up your schedule, receive concise data reports, and improve product flow. The addition of inventory management software could be the game changer you need to move up faster, better. Contact us for more information.

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Three Tips for Determining What Type of Inventory Management Platform You Need