Inventory Management Tips For Small Businesses
Being an entrepreneur is difficult as there are so many things to do, and when you are starting your business it is critical to manage your inventory carefully. Often this often is pushed aside in favour of tasks like making sales and taking care of customers, but this is a mistake.
Your inventory needs to be well organised, and we hope that we can give you some tips to make this important task easier. Sometimes this is difficult as many businesses start out at home and quite often space is limited.
Organise your inventory carefully
Organize products by type, and group them together in the same place, so they’re easy to find. If funds permit, purchase racking and label the shelves. If the items are in boxes and are har to identify, you can take digital photos and place them on the outside of the boxes. It is important to know your best sellers and keep them in a prominent position so that they can be easily accessed.
Get rid of old stock
This is hard as no business owner wants to write off inventory. However, you don’t want to clutter your limited space with “dead” stock. Consider selling it at a discount or donating it to a worthy cause if you have to.
Get Quickbooks or an inventory management app
Quickbooks is a great accounting software programme and it makes inventory management easy. There are also some good inventory management apps that you can pay for monthly.
Below are some popular inventory management apps:
Hire staff to help you as your business grows
This is always a difficult step. However, as the business grows you have to avoid burnout and you sometimes have to hire extra help. You will wonder if the time is right and if you can afford it, but at some point you will have to bite the bullet so that you don’t spend all of your time managing inventory and you can focus on growing your business and doing the myriad of administrative tasks that you have to do. As the business grows, make a list of what you want to do, and what you want to delegate, and prioritize as you may not be able to hire all of the help that you need at once.
Move your inventory to a storage facility
Self-storage is an excellent alternative to renting a warehouse, when you run out of space at home. As your business grows, you can authorize other people to retrieve items from storage without giving them the key to your house. You only pay for the space you need, and you can easily upsize to a larger unit when you need to. If you have heavy items, consider renting a drive-up unit so that you can drive right up to the unit and offload your stock. If you have items that are heat sensitive, you can rent a temperature controlled unit in which to store them. You will store your precious stock in a secure environment, and you won’t have to invest in expensive CCTV and motion detectors. You can purchase tenant insurance for additional peace of mind. Also, we can change the code for you if an employee leaves your business
