The importance of Live Stock and Stock Management

The importance of knowing what stock you have and having control of your stock inventory cannot be underestimated. Full and accurate stock counts can have an impact on all parts of your business from costs to staff efficiencies to customer service. In short knowing what stock you have can help you to save both time and money. How can it do this?

Improved Accuracy of Orders - It sounds so simple but if you know what stock you are selling you know what you need to order. You can see what products the customer needs and wants and tailor your orders to this. By looking at the faster turning lines you can also make sure that you are not running out of stock too soon and therefore are maximising your sales based on actual factual data.

Improved customer service - This follows on from the improved accuracy of orders. If you know what stock you have and what stock the customer is buying you can ensure that you are catering for your customer.

Potential Lower Stock holding - An accurate stock count will highlight the lines that are taking up space on your shelves and in your warehouse and which aren’t selling. These lines are taking the space of the lines that are selling and are costing you both in stock costs and potential lost sales of lines that could replace them.

Less wastage - if lines aren’t selling they eventually become obsolete but if you are not monitoring this there is the potential for this to go unnoticed. Having live stock will allow you to highlight these lines and to deal with them before this happens.

Improved Forward Planning - with the correct information you can plan properly. You can be prepared for seasonal events and promotions and know that you have accurate information to back up these plans.

We have multiple reports which can help you to identify issues and assist you in maximising your potential based on the data within these reports. The Stock Exceptions report will show you where your negative stocks and high value stocks are, allowing you to fix any issues that you might have. Check your Cover By Dept and Store Report to see if you have issues with high or low weeks cover in your stores, this can be a very useful tool to help identify the areas you need to focus in on.