For any e-store to be successful, inventory management is a crucial part. Several errors may creep into your inventory management without you knowing about them. And if you fail to detect those errors and believe that your inventory is smooth and error-free, it could result in a ‘huge’ loss.Let’s understand several common inventory management mistakes that you should avoid, preventing major inventory management issues later.
Failure to Forecast Demand
While managing inventory, you must understand that if you aren’t able to forecast the demand of products accurately; it may result in ‘too many’ or ‘fewer’ effects than required. If a bug attacks your inventory management software, your forecast may go wrong and lead to errors in inventory calculation. It may also lead to ‘overproduction’ of less demanded products and vice-versa. This would not only result in financial loss but also in customers’ dissatisfaction.
Not Checking Inventory Frequently Enough
As the inventory grows in size with growth in business, inventory management might be difficult at times. The result is less frequent inventory checks and several issues left unseen. If you aren’t running inventory checks more frequently, shrinkage and poor forecasting may go unnoticed.
This may result in a messy and unmanaged situation where restoring to normalcy can become quite challenging.
Too Many Product Variations
Having quite a large number of SKUs may not sound like an issue but if not handled properly, it can be. If you purchase the same type of product but with numerous SKUs; it may cause inadvertent counting errors and confusion later.
For instance, if two products look alike in terms of appearance and features; they all may be counted as one. This mistake can impact the accuracy of your counts in case those two products are of different sizes, come in boxes different in size, or are of different prices.
To avoid this issue, you should be more careful while counting products with similar appearance and features.
Using Just Excel Sheets
When there was nothing like technology, businesses would still maintain inventory in the most convenient method – using pen and paper. Thanks to the advent of Microsoft Office in the late 20th century, businesses switched from the traditional pen and paper to the more modern ‘Excel’ approach to manage inventory. However, ‘Excel’ sheets don’t suffice for very large businesses and their inventories.
If you too use Excel sheets, there may be errors like double-entry of the same product, failure to update any product, etc. As a result, inventory management may go haywire, and resolving the issues risen from confusion or errors may be very tough. In that case, you may need to go through all the changes previously made to find out a single small error that failed your inventory management. Thanks to a plethora of inventory management tools (or modules) that are available now, you can automate your inventory management, and reduce chances of wastage of time and efforts, and most importantly – errors.
Inadequate Training
Even if you have state-of-the-art inventory management tools and technologies, they won’t be of much avail unless your employees know how to make the best use of them. Here arises the need to properly train your employees – especially the ones in the inventory management department, about how to manage inventory properly. Without proper demos and workshops to teach them how to use the latest technology to update and manage inventory efficiently and productively, you can’t expect them to perform or be proactive.
How Magento 2 Inventory Management App Can Help
Our Magento 2 Inventory Management can help you as it has productive features that include:
Supplier Management
You can add and manage suppliers and their details easily, from within the inventory manager app. Your suppliers can get a dedicated area to view purchase orders, create products, edit details, etc. This helps in bridging the communication gap between you and your suppliers.
Multi-Store Support
Through our Magento 2 Inventory Management Extension, you can generate reports of various products and currency supported depending on the sales and customer modules’ data for a particular store you select.
Product Stock Management
You can view, edit, and manage your product stocks on the go with Magento 2 Inventory Management extension. It can let you view product quantity, product images, enable/disable products, and update the quantity.
Purchase Order Management
Our Magento 2 Inventory Management app lets you generate POs with all the details required. You can view all POs, apply filters for better insights into customers’ behavior. You can also generate invoices for POs with quantity received, shipping charges, etc.
Configurable Dashboard
Magento 2 Inventory Management app lets you customize your mobile-first dashboard according to your business requirements. You can add all the required dashlets right on your dashboard and get an easy overview of all inventory operations on the fly.
These features combine together to let online retail store owners manage their inventory efficiently and reduce errors to a minimum. Eventually your productivity can increase in a short span of time.
If you also want to integrate it into your store to solve your inventory issues; you can drop us a line at [email protected] and our sales team will revert to you within 24 hours.
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