Retail Hero: During a busy sales season you might have been asking yourself: “Do I manage inventory or inventory manages me?” Inventory is a retailer's biggest business asset. Yet without the right information it can spell disaster in bold letters. You have to control the flow of inventory from where you first plan your purchases to buying, receiving, selling and even returns. While some of the problems can be attributed to error, more often the problems come from not having the right information about the inventory in order to make informed decisions. It is better to know what are you over-bought or over-inventoried in a particular department than not having the correct information or not having the correct inventory.
What inventory management your POS system must be able doing? Here’s the list:
- Store individual and group markdowns easily
- Track and manage any type of the inventory you could ever possibly carry
- Uncover the opportunity gap between inventory levels, inventory on order, sales and margins
- Create parameters for best and poor performers in various categories
- Report on sales and inventory by SKU, category and store
- Provide accurate insight into your inventory
- Allow for comparison shopping analysis
- Provide with ability to easily perform spot manual inventories of department, category or vendor and update data in the system
The lack of accuracy can negatively impact the buying decisions you will make which means that you can be over- or under- bought. You may also not have confidence in your systems and employees - because the inventory is taken rarely, the numbers may be inaccurate and shrinkage is completely out of control. At this point you should be really taking steps to manage your inventory because right now it's probably managing you.
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