How does stock control process influence your business growth?

9.12.2019

Every business organization undergoes from stock control process and inventory management problems. Loss of accounts for a considerable amount of total sales that includes theft by customers or employees, or staff and administrative errors. And if you are looking forward to grow your business, keeping track of your stock records and the way you manage your inventory can influence your growth in terms of profit or loss and can also determine your customer satisfaction ability.

Maintaining stock records has become a crucial part of every business in today’s time. Before knowing the stock control process, one should be aware about the top benefits of stock control. Having a clear vision about your business target needs from the stock control system is a must. These targets help you identify the effectiveness of your current system and also if improvement is possible and where and how. Outcomes such as;

• System should be able to provide real time information about the stocks
• System should provide updated information about the stocks as and when changes are taking place
• It should involve a plan for how much inventory to order and keep, and when to re-order as well.

After having the expected set outcomes clear, the stock control system and are looking forward to expand your business, then here are some tips to reduce loss of stocks greatly and thus help you in the stock control process.

Check all the stocks arrived in:

Your first focus should be checking on whether the delivered stock is exactly what you ordered from your supplier. Sometimes suppliers get stock orders incorrectly packed and while assuming you have correct numbers you add the inventory to your shelves. In these cases when you receive orders you are liable to get short stocked and thus lose your sales and your credibility as well. In another case you might actually have more stock than needed and you won’t even know when to reduce prices or not order anymore of it.

Store the stock carefully:

Stocking your products at the right place is very important as it prevents errors. It is easier to place your stock wherever it fits. But the easy way isn’t always better, as this can make it harder to track the product. And if you have similar products with similar packaging then there are chances that your staff may make a mistake and likely cause errors.

Label each products:

In order to avoid errors related to duplication, it is necessary to create labels for each product in your stock with product number, quantity, basic description including vendor name and other important details. Labelling makes identifying the product much easier. It makes tracking easier as you are always able to know about the box’s contents with its exact quantity. This can also be done using barcodes instead of labels.

Track expiry date of products:

If you hand over expired products to the customers, then you will be liable for heavy penalties. You probably must have seen clearance racks with 50% discounts at supermarkets. They are basically selling in cost to cost price. If you track your expiry dates, you will be able to deal with expiring products better because then you will have a record of expiration dates for different batches per product. It is also important to check the best before dates of outgoing orders before packing.

Maintaining proper stock records:

Every business has different peak times when the sales increase or decrease with large differences and also each supplier also have their own different lead times. So if you want to keep your business going and want to escape out of stock situations then you should be able to have a definite answer to how long you should restock normally and forecast the amount of time the minimum stock level will get exhausted. In these cases, you need to keep in account the market seasons and then the fluctuating customer demands. You should ideally have a buffer amount to cover the amount of time that is required for restocking. You are also required to maintain stock of less-demanded products for lowering the transportation costs.

Handle returns effectively:

Handling your stocks during unfavourable circumstances is one of the important process your company should be able to tackle. If you get any delivered stock returned when they are discovered defective then you have to make sure that your stock levels don’t get adjusted upwards and update your suppliers about the same.

Live information about your stocks:

You should always keep track of your stock in real-time. If you have made or encountered an error, then it’s better to point it before taking the order. If not, then you will have to spend time contacting them if an error is spotted later or restocking if you haven’t and in the worst case you fail to deliver and lose your sale with the credibility of your brand.

Prioritise your stocks:

Keeping track of inventories altogether is a time consuming process and exhausting task. One  should keep the stock priority straight. Usually, 80% of your demands are generated by only 20% of your products. You should set management operations i.e. forecasting, stock-level check, and reordering of these products as priority. Then make next best selling products next on your list. You can focus on stock tracking accordingly for the rest of your stock too.

Consider an automated solution:

Keeping a track about your stocks manually with the help of a pen and paper should be scrapped out. As it requires a lot of energy, consumes too much time, does not hold accuracy with the stock records and many other drawbacks. Automation of stock records can increase the productivity of your business management process and thereby help your business in growing. You can also use cloud-based automated solutions for stock management so that you are always available from wherever you are and whenever needed. These can have considerable impact on your bottom line and allow you to grow faster.

Why Herbst Stock Control System?

Herbst Software is known to offer a powerful fully integrated stock management system, built to deal with a wide range and high volume of stock operations. This solution gives you the ability to manage your product life cycle and optimise inventory operations across the organisation, then linking this information in real-time directly with all of the other software features and business processes.

The purpose of this solution is to completely automate your stock control procedures with 100% accuracy.  With the sales and purchases ledgers being fully integrated, stock levels are easily maintained and tracked as this data connects directly with the stock levels. Additionally, this solution gives you real time insight into the current stock levels and allows for actionable information you can use to keep your business running efficiently at all times. Our touch screen kiosk software is also available to use in warehouses to facilitate real-time management of stock.

To know more about Herbst Software click here

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