Inventory is money, so keeping track of your inventory is critical. Try this quick inventory best practice checklist to see if you are getting the most out of your Readysell inventory module:
Warehouse and retail layout drives efficiency
- Define warehouse zones so heavy items are picked appropriately, fast pick is easy to access, bulk locations are out of the way and retail is seperate
- Plan all warehouse, show room, credit return, back order receipt and retail locations
- Allow space for receipting and plan a good flow of stock from receipting through to shipping areas
- Set appropriate location sizes for your business, from one shelf min to two meters max
- Setup trucks as stock locations if you use the service module
- Set min and max levels for product locations to support stock replenishment from bulk to fast pick or tracks
- Set retail locations to quarantine
- Print bar coded location labels and place them on the appropriate locations. Consider using non-stick shelf talkers as labels
Manage those slow moving products
- Show stock on hand, last receipt date, last sale date and date created on your product list. Then filter to show items created more than three months ago that have stock on hand and a last shipment more than three months ago.
- Review and consider putting on sale slow moving lines that are not parts of ranges
Automate price changes
- Use price book runs to ensure automatic updates will not cause wild changes to cost or sell prices due to variances in units
- Once you have settled in price book runs, contact Readysell support and have automatic price updates turned on
- Avoid catalogue loads. Even automatic catalogue loads can be replaced by automatic price updates
- Manual loads of flyers might be justified, as flyers need to be reviewed and they don't permanently change any sell prices
- Consider loading spreadsheets to the price book for any ranges that are not covered by your automatic data feeds
- Generate price change labels for your retail area based on last primary sell price changed date
Use the mobile app
Wireless warehousing using the mobile app on apple, android or windows is just best practice. Change is difficult, your team is probably used to picking from orders or picking slips. But the mobile app is just more efficient. The time has come to move to the best practice and mobile app is it.
- Start by parrallel running sale shipments and move on from there
- Plan on three hours training and implementation assistance. Every hour you spend on training will save you many hours of trial and error
- Buy mobile units that support team viewer so Readysell can provide remote support
- Review hour mobile device hardware guide before you purchase any devices
Automated warehousing is for everyone
- Automated warehousing can benefit every business. Take the time to understand the settings on your site file
- The learning curve is justified, if you are not using automatic warehousing have it turned on
Advanced warehousing features you should be using
- Wireless tables for putting away purchase receipts and picking sale shipments
- Scan checking of purchase receipts entering the business. Consider using a large screen so your team can see your receipts display from a distance
- Scan checking sale shipments
- Automated warehousing as noted above
- Drag quantity on sales back order onto the purchase receipt lines view. Then put aside that quantity into a back orders area. This saves a lot of time as pickers don't have to walk to the shelves to collect back orders
- Picking slips with a count bigger than one are for back orders. So picking slips "2 of 2" is for backorders. Train your team to take such picking slips to the back order are
Stocktakes require organisation
Successful stocktakes require careful organisation. In particular:
- Understand and plan the type of stock you will be using. There are a variety of stocktake methods and a seperate group of stocktake stock clearing methods. Make sure you understand the difference between the methods of running stocktakes and the methods of clearing stock.
- Ensure you have a manual checklist to plan and track stocktake progress
- If you are still in doubt use the ad-hock stocktake method.
- Setup locations and location labels before stocktake
- Consider doing a stocktake without counting the stock, just to put the stock in the right locations
- Laptops are best for your first stocktake
- Tablets are best for second stockitakes
If you have been running Readysell for six months and you have established best warehouse and inventory practices, you should not need to do stocktakes ever again. If you find yourself needing to do continuing stocktakes then something else is wrong. Spend the time to identify and correct the cause of the problem. This will normally be some procedure that is not being carried out correctly or is not correctly trained and defined.
Track stock adjustments
- Retail workstations can make automatic stock adjustments so that customers can buy stock that they have in their hands but which is not yet receipted into the system. Those adjustments should reverse. Review automatic stock adjustments once a week to check they are being automatically reversed
- Stock adjustments can be made from sales by right clicking on the product, consider applying security limits to this feature. If not review the number, value and created by for stock adjustments each week
- Ensure staff classify stock adjustments to the correct stock adjustment type. "short stock" should only be used where other more defined reasons such as "damaged stock" do not apply
Don't get burnt by fixed sell prices
Readysell supports a vast range of sell price options. Make sure you are using the right sell price strategies for your business:
- Fixed sell prices suit prices that are automatically updated from external data feeds. If the sell price is not updated automatically, do not use fixed sell prices
- The price method for each price level can be adjusted for individual products
- Use markup from cost to ensure you hold your margin as costs change
- Price categories on products can override other price rules. For example on large ranges of low cost consumables that you import without recommended sells
- Price levels can be discounts from other levels, this can reduce your number of contracts and your price maintenance load
- Put customers on price levels to provide incentives without the maintenance involved in contract prices
- Remember, contracts can apply to supplier costs
- Make use of market competitor price levels if they are updated into your system
Understand your warehous and your team
- Readysell can report on bin hits per hour to measure the effectiveness of your warehouse layout. The fast movers should be near the front of your warehouse
- Picker shipment lines per day and credit/error rates can be tracked. Use this information to monitor your team. Perhaps additional training is required.