You might already be using Xero as your accounting solution but your business may have outgrown it, hence you find yourself needing a more robust management solution. Below are 5 signs you need to upgrade your inventory management system.
1. Spending hours counting stock each week
You’re long overdue for an inventory system. If you’re spending hours physically counting products and regularly checking in your warehouse each week to monitor stock. An inventory system will keep track of your current stock, and automatically update data when you buy and sell products; this will save you from having to tally stock levels in a spreadsheet, and it will also help differentiate between what you have on hand and what you have available to sell.
2. You run out of stock before your new stock arrives
If you’re running out of stock then you’re losing sales, it’s as simple as that. Implementing an inventory system allows you to specify a minimum stock level and can also inform you when you’ve achieved that level so you can purchase more stock, avoiding both running out of stock and the costly mistake of overstocking.
3. You don’t know which products are your most profitable
Profitability isn’t only the difference between what you sell and what you pay your supplier; there are many other factors to consider, such as transportation, import duties, currency conversion, and how long you will hold the stock. An inventory solution will assist you in determining the right margins, allowing you to simply report on which goods are the most lucrative.
4. You need to keep track of different prices for different customers
Maybe as your business has grown you started selling three different channels, rather than just selling online through your Shopify store; now you have wholesale customers, distributors, and they all have different prices perhaps, special deals, negotiated pricing, or discounts you have arranged. Inventory software can help you manage multiple price tiers, ensuring that everyone in your company is aware of how much they should charge each customer.
5. You’re spending too long updating stock figures on your website
Perhaps updating stock levels every day and specifying which products are out of stock wasn’t a major concern in the early days of your online business, but as you develop and receive dozens or hundreds of orders each day, it’s no longer viable. Advanced inventory systems fortunately talk to all major online stores like Shopify and Woo-Commerce and will automatically update stock on a real-time basis, ensuring that your website is always up to date and that clients do not order goods that are no longer in stock.
At Business Continuum, we know that moving to an inventory solution can be very overwhelming, with our help we can not only architect the solution, but we help manage the change to a solution so that you can automate your buy cycle, to save time and money.
What Next?
We partner with a variety of software providers such as Xero, DEAR Systems, Unleashed and Cin7. Please contact us for a free consultation to see which inventory solution is right for you.
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