One of the key factors in the efficiency of your business is having efficient inventory management. The major part of your inventory is composed of most items that are consumed either on projects or that are sold off.
While most companies invest in consumables, they do not always maximize the return on these. One way to help with this is to run regular reports on the utilization, procurement, and costs associated with your consumables. Being able to run reports in a cloud-based tracking system will allow your business to see some real-time data on your inventory.
Here is how you and your business can benefit
- Greater visibility on your inventory: You need to know if the consumable inventory is available, and if so, how much you have. Knowing this information is paramount so that you can accurately plan your production process. Having automated reports that are centered around the stock you have available will help you with the planning process.
- Data-driven Forecasting: Maintaining optimal stock levels is key to avoiding inventory distortion. To help with this, run frequent reports on the utilization of your stock.
- Know your Inventory across your locations: If your company has multiple warehouses where it stores inventory, it can be difficult to keep track of your stock. Set up reports that automatically run to improve your inventory visibility.
- Ensure Compliance: Run regular audits on your inventory to make sure that you are staying GAAP compliant.
Here are five reports that can help you streamline the management of your inventory:
- In-stock Inventory report: Anytime you are selling a product, you have to know how much you have available. To be able to run with no interruptions, you need to have up-to-date records. With real-time reporting, you can have a live picture of your current stock across multiple storage locations.
- Low-stock Inventory report: If you are constantly running low on stock, then you are more than likely running out of your consumables during your production hours. This will have huge implications on your worker's productivity. By running regularly scheduled inventory reports, you are able to maintain a minimum inventory threshold. This will help you understand the consumption of your inventory. You can use these to gauge your seasonal demand by looking for any erratic spikes in your consumption patterns.
- Inventory Utilization report: Keeping track of your utilization and performance of consumables is important, as it is typically over overlooked by companies. Run reports on the frequency of consumables being checked out, as this is a great indicator of the importance of the item in production.
- Aging Inventory report: Tracking the utilization of your assets is not the only important report to run. You also need to be able to actively track devices that are inactive and not being used. This will help you eliminate unnecessary inventory from your stock, and improve your inventory management. Using Aging Inventory reports will help you better understand how long products are sitting in your warehouse. These reports will help to streamline your warehouse management while acting as stock control. By knowing this information, companies are able to cut down on any unnecessary storage fees.
- Sales Margin report: Sales Margin reports are a great way of tracking the total cost of an item. This report is composed of information that includes inventory sold, total cost, and revenue generated. Using this information will help you make informed decisions that will improve your forecasting. Companies are able to see if an item is a well-selling item or not, and from this data will be able to decide if they need to purchase more inventory to increase production or decide if they need to cut production.
Use a tracking system to customize your reports
When running reports, the quality of the report is always going to be derived from the type and amount of data your system allows you to input. The higher the quality and more data you are able to use, the more beneficial your report will be. You should also be able to automate these reports to run and a certain time and have them shared with all the people who need access to this data.
You should also be able to customize these reports for what you need, while also having your data appear in either a chart or graph for better visuals. This will lead to you having the specific data that you need to make better decisions for your company.