The phrase “inventory management” may sound routine and even a bit boring. However, actually it’s a powerful tool that affects not only the profit or loss of your company, but also customer satisfaction. Here are some secrets that may bring your inventory management process to a new level.

1. Name your products clearly. Sounds pretty simple, but helps to avoid confusion when identifying the products and comparing their names in the inventory management system and physical warehouse.
2. Plan your inventory, make forecasts, and have backup plans for each aspect of inventory management. Be proactive and prepared to any possible issues.
3. Have several suppliers for high-sellers. High-sellers are items that have a huge demand, so you may end up with shortage of those items and don’t even notice that. Therefore, an extra supplier sounds like a plan B and will allow you to constantly keep high-selling items in the stock.
4. Establish ongoing “retailer-supplier” relationship. Trusted relationship with your suppliers is half success, so don’t forget to share with them your up-to-date inventory plans.
5. Regularly count your inventory to avoid unexpected stock shortages. Delivrd offers a convenient Inventory Count feature, which is available on the Inventory List page.
6. Carefully check the available stock amount to avoid both out-of-stock and overstock situations. Delivrd has the Reorder Point and Safety Stock features, both of which are available on the product page. Reorder Point means the acceptable minimum of product units in your inventory, after which you should reorder the products from your supplier. Safety Stock means the number of product units in stock after reaching which the products should no longer be issued. As a rule, you first hit the reorder point, and only later, if you failed to manage the stock correctly, you hit the safety stock level. Currently, safety stock is marked with red, whereas the reorder point is marked with yellow for all transactions. Besides, Delivrd displays notifications when the stock falls below the reorder point, and a replenishment order should be created.
7. Manage damaged stock. Sad as it is, but your stock may decrease not only because of sales but also because of the human factor, when warehouse staff may unintentionally damage some items. Besides, the damaged stock can also be shipped from your supplier. Therefore, damaged stock should be properly managed in order to show accurate figures in the reports. In Delivrd, you can activate the damaged stock handling functionality in user settings.
8. Create and maintain inventory documentation. Documenting the standard operating procedures, such as billing instructions, shipping guidelines, product specifications, packaging manuals, and so on, is extremely important for consistency of all processes at the warehouse.
9. Manage inventory at multiple locations. With the growth of your business, it becomes quite tough to manage inventory at one warehouse only. However, you don’t need several inventory management systems for several locations. In user settings of Delivrd, you can turn on the option of handling inventory at multiple locations, making the process easier and more straightforward.
10. Hire a professional to handle your inventory management. Again, as your business grows, you may find it hard to manage the inventory on your own, so it’s always better to entrust this responsibility to a skilled professional.