5 Advantages of Staying on Top of Your Inventory

November 7th 2014 18:59:29 PM

Having accurate inventory numbers is more important than you think. Accurate inventory serves as the foundation your business needs to ensure you can follow through on promises made to your customers and get your accounting right for important audits. Inaccurate inventory, on the other hand, causes inefficiencies across your business, lowers your customer satisfaction rates, and can even add unnecessary costs to your already maxed-out budget. Staying on top of your inventory numbers is key to your success, at least as far as inventory management is concerned.
For many companies, however, maintaining effective inventory counts is challenging. Used to counting their inventory only once a year, these companies often underestimate the amount of product they have on hand, resulting in costly shipping delays, frustrated customers, and rushed employees. Cycle counting can solve this challenge, but it has to be done right. If you transition to the cycle counting model (and we believe everyone should), you need to commit to performing regular counts. Thankfully, this does not have to require too much of your time. You can commit to counting fifteen minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, or an hour a day until everything is counted, and it’s time for the next count.

Here are five advantages to staying on top of your inventory numbers through regular cycle counting:

1. You won’t have to forfeit sales due to out-of-stock situations.
2. You don’t waste money in overstocked inventory (i.e. your dollars aren’t sitting on your warehouse shelves).
3. Your accounting and profit reports will be more accurate.
4. You can predict and solve inventory issues before they get out of control.
5. Customers will be more satisfied with your service and more likely to come back.

If that’s not enough reason to invest time revamping your inventory management process, we don’t know what is. If you could use some help discovering how to implement regular cycle counts into your current warehouse environment, give us a call today. Not only do we know how to introduce new inventory management strategies into existing warehouses, but we also sell and support inventory management applications and barcoding solutions to help you make the entire process easier.