Inventory Management

What are inventory management apps?

Inventory management apps are centred around managing products - buying, selling and keeping track of them. Whether you are tracking stock in Excel or using an on-premise application, upgrading can bring a variety of benefits.Less efficient solutions may work while you are starting out but unless you have a solid base of systems in your business, when you scale those inefficiencies will be magnified.

Stock Control

Stock control may be the unglamourous part of running a product-based business but it is crucial to every other aspect and is neglected to the detriment of the health of the business. Without a system that makes accurate recording of stock movements mandatory, corners will be cut and stock will disappear.

Working Capital

If your business is consistently making a profit but your bank account always seems to be empty, then there is a good chance that you have too much cash tied up in inventory. With accurate tracking and reporting figures, you can ensure that you are not overstocking product lines. This capital can then be redeployed to fund stocking more popular product lines or be used as working capital to reduce the dependence on finance options.

Purchasing

Stock needs to be purchased for one of two reasons - either to fulfill a customer's order where stock on hand is insufficient or to keep a minimum level in a product line. Both of these situations require accurate tracking of stock levels which can only be done when all inventory movements are tied together and accurately recorded. By comparing demand for stock against current and impending supply, it's possible to identify sales where placing an order has been missed before the customer asks.

Sales Aggregation

Businesses nowadays rarely sell through a single channel, which can cause issues with accurate stock level reporting if those various platforms aren't linked together. With an inventory management system at the core of your business, you can see all of your sales in one place, whether they happened in-store, on your website or through another platform.

Reporting

This is often the driving force behind the move to a cloud-based inventory system. Moving from a periodic to a perpetual accounting system allows business owners to track their Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) in real-time instead of having to wait until stocktaking at the end of the month and journaling between accounts.Reports will also let you see your gross margins per item, per category or by any other dimension you want to slice by, in order to get a clearer picture of what works and what doesn't.

What Exact recommends

We wholeheartedly recommend Dear Systems, as it provides the rock-solid foundation needed to be able to accurately track stock and the financial performance of your product-based business. We do occasionally work with other platforms as required by clients but for a new implementation, the answer is always Dear.