As a retailer, one of the greatest challenges in running your business profitability is to maintain the accurate inventory. One of the biggest factors that affect the accuracy of your inventory is accurate inventory counts.
The first secret to make inventory counts accurate is to use high-quality point of sale software solution. If your inventory management software does not work properly and it can not keep track of your inventory in between the inventory counts, your employee will be frustrated. Nothing is more frustrating than having a computer tells you that you should have 10 products, while physically you only have 8 and then later find that it is the computer that makes mistakes.
If the computer can not keep track of inventory properly, your employees will not be motivated to count inventory accurately either. A high quality point of sale system is a must in this case. If the point of sale software can not keep track of your inventory correctly through everyday business processes such as sales, returns, multilocation transfers, special orders, etc., then find one that does. Your employees must have be sure that computer is hardly ever wrong.
Second, it is important to have a proper training during the inventory count. Spot checking people’s work is essential. If you have a whole team doing the inventory count, but a person is always constantly making mistake, it will frustate the other team members who are trying hard to match things up. Do not let a bad apple spoil the whole process for you. The inventory count is a fairly lengthy process for the employees. Do not make it worse by allowing lazy employees to ruin the accuracy of the entire inventory. Create a specific section for people and confront those who are not counting accurately immediately to find out why they are finding it difficult. Perhaps there is a reason that is not their fault.
Thirdly, invest in technology. A bar code system can significantly improve the accuracy of your inventory and the inventory counts. By labeling each piece of the inventory with a simple bar code labels that can be printed from a high-quality point of sale software attached to the barcode printer, you can keep track of your inventory easily.
At the checkout counter, your employee can use the barcode scanner to scan inventory at the time of checkout. This can ensures that the correct products have been sold to customers, in contrast to having your clerks trying to remember the code for the products being sold. Do not rely on your clerks. They are humans and they can make mistakes. A barcode system virtually eliminate that.
During the inventory count, you can also implement a portable inventory barcode scanners to track your inventory. Instead of to remember the “code”, or try to identify exactly what the staff is counting, your staffs can simply scan the barcode of the products being counted into the portable scanner and enter the quantity that they see.
This simple but effective trick is a good way to improve the inventory count accuracy.