Retail Inventory Management
Customer demand fluctuates throughout the year; being able to fulfill it when it rises and minimize overages when it dips is the fine art of retail inventory management.
Because inventory is the largest expense a retailer faces, the goal of efficient inventory management relies on a balancing act to minimize money floated to cover it while working to prevent stockouts. The result is the implementation of a variety of mathematical formulas to take historical sale performance and lead time into account.
When a retailer carries large quantities of inventory, ideally, if the inventory counts update in real-time, managers will get accurate quantities and costs when they pull sales reports. Not every retailer is set up to do so but applying the perpetual inventory method whereby inventory is updated upon the arrival of merchandise and again at the retail point of sale keeps the entire system in sync to provide everyone with the same data.
Handling the Most Difficult Tasks with Retail Inventory Management Software
If a retailer had to manually calculate all the necessary formulas to make purchasing decisions for profitability, yet never run out of inventory, he would be facing failure in a very short time. The careful balancing act of ordering enough but not too much is best managed by software designed for retail inventory management.
Running a retail business involves tracking and storing a lot of information that goes well beyond inventory quantities. Inventory management is the process of guiding a product through its journey from the time the item is received until it is purchased, and sometimes beyond, when a warranty is involved. Each product cycles through the premises with a story of its journey indicating where it’s been, what happened, how it changed, who handled it, who sold it, who bought it and where it was shipped. An ecommerce or brick-and-mortar storefront can potentially showcase inventory with millions of data points behind it. Being able to analyze that information, gain insights and make important business decisions demands intelligent software design that integrates the workflows of many different departments and locations. Putting the right retail inventory solutions in place will set your business up to handle them more efficiently.
Sales Analysis Capabilities of Retail Inventory Software
SOS Inventory offers over fifty different types of reports for deep product analysis, with fifteen different types of sales reports and extensive retail inventory management software capabilities.
Identify profits by manufacturer, specific product, or style. There are unlimited ways to delve into the data with custom columns to add whatever fields you need.
- Commission Report
- Master Sales Report
- Open Sales Order Detail
- Open Sales Receipt Detail
- Price Book
- Profit / Loss by Customer
- Profit / Loss by Item
- Profit / Loss by Job
- Ready to Invoice
- Sales By Customer – Summary
- Sales By Customer Type – Summary
- Sales By Item – Summary
- Sales By Vendor – Summary
- Sell Through
How can you implement a retail inventory method with markdowns?
The information you glean from sales reports will indicate which products sell well, which don’t, and time frames when they sell better than others. Some retail sectors become quickly outdated like furniture and clothing. The items that aren’t moving must be marked down at the end of the season and moved at a lower profit margin or sold to discount warehouses otherwise they will become outdated, dead stock. A great retail inventory tracking system like SOS Inventory can help you to effectively manage these items.
How can SOS Inventory’s retail inventory tracking software features help reduce inventory costs?
Having the capability to order only the amount of inventory you need precisely when you need it, automatically according to preset reorder points gives your business the ability to run smoothly, avoiding stockouts and keeping up with fluctuating demand while minimizing storage and shipping costs. SOS Inventory has all the vital functions built in to make retail inventory management easier to do.
Lowering operating costs leads to increased profits. SOS Inventory will streamline workflow processes by reducing the amount of labor involved to track and update all the data it handles. Identify sources of shrinkage – whether by breakage, loss, or theft – to implement changes to reduce it.
Imagine a retail inventory system expanded to manage every workflow your business touches and you’d have SOS Inventory.
Integrate Sales Channels with Retail Inventory Tracking Software
If you’re selling products in a store, on your ecommerce website, Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, etc. it’s a challenge to manage orders coming in from various portals. Process the sales orders, updating inventory, triggering purchase orders or production, creating invoices, pick tickets and shipping can all be simplified by managing your inventory with SOS Inventory. SOS Inventory can connect by API or EDI to import sales and update inventory quantities for consistent data everywhere you access it, and thus acts as your complete retail order management software, as well.
When customers receive their purchases on-time or with minimal delay, they will be happier customers. Building your business relies on nurturing customer satisfaction, which is easier to do when you have a handle on your retail inventory management processes.
