Solid Inventory Management Starts for Under $100

 While stocking up ahead of time may be a sound strategy for things like breakfast cereal and toilet paper, the same cannot often be said in your business. In fact, excess inventory can sometimes cost your business a lot of money. That’s why we figured that we would discuss how an inventory strategy can help prevent redundant spending in your business.

Keeping Track of Your Hardware

To begin, let’s go over a surprisingly old-fashioned solution to this age-old problem: taking inventory.

You want to have a running tally of all of your hardware resources, from your servers and their components to the extra computer mouses (technically the plural for the component) you have saved in a box. The best way to do this? Invest in a label maker. Today, you can get label makers available for less than $100 that can print out barcodes or QR codes. Tagging all of your hardware with these labels makes it a lot easier to pull up the information on each piece when you need it.

Managing Your Inventory

Once you have a handle on what you have, you need a platform that will help you to manage it going forward. An inventory management system (or IMS) is a tool that allows you to track your items as they move about your business. This transparency can help eliminate some of the redundancy while making your overall management much easier.

This software can also allow you to embrace automation. Items can be reordered automatically when supplies are low, your team can be alerted when items need to be restocked, and other basic processes are made much easier. Try to find a platform that supports the following:

• Barcode scanner - An obvious addition that allows quick information on any tagged item. 
• Optimization - Make sure that you have the right amount of a product. Overstocking and under-stocking can be problematic for numerous reasons.
• Report generation - Being able to view sales history, manage current inventory, manage sales levels, and more. 
• POS integration - One beneficial strategy is to integrate your point-of-sale system and your IMS. 
• Purchase order management - Get an IMS that gives you a single view of purchasing records. 

Some of these solutions have even more features, intended to automate warehouse management, and give you product demand insights. Most businesses won’t need these features to simply manage their own operations, so keep this in mind as you review your options.