The Best Way to Keep Track of Your Inventory Online

For many e-commerce stores at the start of their journey, keeping track of stock often takes a rather primitive form. For example, when it comes to raw material inventory management, Excel is often the spreadsheet of choice for staying up to date. For those yet to fully get to grips with the subject, Katana offers a free, Excel-based template to get you started.

While that may serve a valuable function when you’re still in the infancy of your business, there will come a time when you’ll outgrow spreadsheets and want to move onto something more efficient and organized… but Katana have you covered here, too. By using their sophisticated software, you can upgrade your operations, get a better handle on your inventory, and ensure your company goes from strength to strength.

Happier inventories

Did you know that inventory records are only accurate 63% of the time? Despite all the protocols you put in place, human error is an unavoidable fact of life. That means that no matter how diligent your staff is, it’s inevitable that they’ll make slip-ups from time to time, leading to raw material shortages, incomplete product recipes, and ultimately, delayed or missed orders.

While Katana does offer a free Excel template for manufacturing inventory management, they also provide excellent material requirements planning (MRP) software, which can take your stocktaking to the next level. Integrate your supply of resources with your product recipes and your real-time orders to ensure you never run out of the necessary materials ever again.

Happier employees

Upgrading from a spreadsheet to MRP software will help your workforce in a number of different ways. For one thing, they’ll no longer have to deal with cumbersome spreadsheets containing unintelligible (and often inaccurate) data, but rather a sleek and sophisticated tool that keeps all the relevant info in one place for easy viewing.

What’s more, using MRP software to handle your inventory management will also save huge amounts of time, freeing up your staff to handle other tasks. This will not only transform your company culture and enhance productivity, but it will also boost employee morale and improve retention rates. As such, it’s a win-win for both the individual and the collective. If you decide to move from spreadsheets to a web app, you don’t have to worry about losing all your data. For example, with a Kohezion database software, you can do it in a few steps without having to know programming.

Happier customers

One of the biggest advantages of an accurate inventory is that it means you’ll never be caught short for materials. In turn, that translates into no missed or delayed orders, which can have a huge bearing on your reputation among your customer base. In fact, 57% of those surveyed say that retailers are often disappointed when it comes to the final mile of the delivery process.

By ensuring that 100% of your orders are fulfilled on time, you can set yourself apart from the competition and mark you out as a business that its customers can rely on. This will establish trust between you and your target market, ensuring that consumers come back to you time and time again. Given the importance of repeat custom to the success of any business, that’s an advantage you simply can’t afford to miss out on.