Inventory Management — Accurate Inventory is Critical to Your Business Success (Part I)

For people who run an inventory-based business, that is–you make or buy an item and store it until a customer purchases it–managing inventory is a big part of your operations. As a small businesses owner, you probably can’t afford to tie up all your cash in inventory so you may operate on a just-in-time inventory basis – you order products to fill immediate orders with some backstock and reorder frequently. To manage your inventory efficiently, you need to know what you have on hand so you don’t oversell or overpromise your goods to your customers and you need to know what you don’t have or are running low on so you can make or order more. Keeping track of inventory costs and quantities manually or in spreadsheets, not to mention keeping it all up-to-date, is a total pain. I feel your pain. I’ve been there.

I’m Kelli Wall, and I am the Content & Support Manager here at WorkingPoint. I have spent years working with small business owners– getting to know their pain points and helping them streamline their operations so they can work smarter not harder and really focus on what they love most about their business—and I am a small business owner myself. At WorkingPoint, I get to do the same thing. As Support Manager, I hear your cries and get to relay them to our team so we can make WorkingPoint better for you. I also manage the Help Content you see in WorkingPoint and here on our blog, keeping you informed about what is new, exciting and how WorkingPoint can help solve your pain points.

That is why I am super excited about how we manage your inventory for you in WorkingPoint. You don’t have to check the shelves and try to remember what you already sold but haven’t shipped yet before accepting an order. And you don’t have to comb the shelves every other day wondering what you need to reorder from your vendors. We’ll tell you what you have on hand when you write up your quote or invoice and we’ll keep track of your quantities for you so you can just check your Items List when you are looking to reorder.

As you invoice for your items, we’ll also help you keep track of your inventory from a sales perspective. Add Top Sellers – Quantity and Top Sellers – Revenue widgets [available in the next week] to your home page and you can see at-a-glance, what items are outperforming all the rest.

We’ll even calculate the average cost of your items and record the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) so you don’t have to worry about that either! Keeping an accurate record of the value of your inventory and recording the value of what you sold is super important to your bottom line and the IRS and State come tax time. (More on that later.)

By tracking your inventory in WorkingPoint, you will have the real-time information you need to make the best buying decisions for your business. Next time, I’ll share how easy it is to get started tracking your inventory.

Kelli Wall
Content & Support Manager