Inventory is a major asset in a business, as it ties up considerable cash that could be used for other purposes.
For this reason, good inventory management is a must. What is good inventory management? Essentially, it is a balance between over-stocking and under-stocking – that is, stocking sufficient materials to fill customer orders without having too much or too little inventory.
Topics: training, software, inventory management, inventory, inventory control, john shepperson, oates co, cycle counting, variances, blind counting, procedures, adjustments
Proactively addressing potential issues in your business can prevent future problems, and inventory is especially important, as it is your biggest asset and represents a significant investment of company cash. 
First, what is inventory? Inventory is your … stuff. The stuff you have to make things, the stuff you sell, the stuff you use to run the office – basically, all the things that you use in your business to generate revenue.
Here are two tools to evaluate efficient inventory management.
Topics: inventory management, inventory, john shepperson, oates co, tools, turnover rate, obsolescence, purchasing policies
Even though the goal of your business is expansion, big upsurge in your growth can land you in some situations that you’re not quite prepared to deal with right away, especially if the influx of growth catches you off guard.
The good news is these growing pains can be managed with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that will make your small business thrive – and be prepared to deal with more and more growth and you become more and more successful.
Topics: oates, automation, billing, software, inventory management, inventory, Sage 100, Sage 100 ERP, john shepperson, oates co, manufacturing, payments
The way you manage the inventory process flow in your warehouse is critical. Even if you have the best product on the market, you won’t be in business very long if your warehouse misplaces or loses merchandise. Making sure that your inventory flows smoothly in and out the door means managing your warehouse with a few best practices in mind:
Define What You Have
Topics: shipping, inventory management, inventory, john shepperson, oates co, moving, receiving, warehouse, inventory process
Sage’s latest version of its 500 ERP software is full of new features and has been designed to improve your productivity and simplify your business processes even more.
Topics: oates, Sage, Sage 500, inventory management, cloud services, john shepperson, sage inventory advisor, reverse applications, expanded fields, payment solutions, sage 500 erp, 2014 version, electronic funds transfer, ach network
As a startup or small business, it might seem like a good idea to use free inventory control spreadsheets to manage your inventory. It's certainly cheaper than using software that comes with an inventory management program and its own spreadsheets.
Topics: oates, oates and company, inventory management, inventory, inventory control, john shepperson, spreadsheets, free software, free spreadsheets
Having the right inventory management formulas will make your business’s warehouse a more efficient place.
Here are some quick tricks to do so:
Topics: oates and co, Sage, inventory management, john shepperson, managing inventory
Inventory is the lifeblood of your business; it probably represents the biggest number on your balance sheet. Managing your inventory is possible through a number of different methods – you can use anything from top-notch software to Excel spreadsheets to paper-based documentation. And while of course each business must make their own decision about how to manage their inventory, we at Oates & Company recommend Sage’s Inventory Advisor. Not only does it make your inventory management easier and more effective, Sage’s products offer stellar customer service as well.
Sage’s Inventory Advisor software is a warehouse-centric system that enables you to track costs and sales histories by warehouse and to set up multiple price lists in multiple currencies and multiple warehouses – so the size of your company is not a boundary with this system. It supports assemble-to-order as well as build-to-order kits, includes lot and serial number tracking, and supports first in first out, last in last out, average, actual, standard, and warehouse-specific costing.
Topics: ERP, oates and co, Sage, inventory control system, enterprise resource planning, inventory management, inventory, john shepperson, inventory advisor, sage's inventory advisor
We all know that time is money. And if you’re losing stock or sales because you’re having inventory issues, you’re losing money by the minute.
If this is happening to you, you want to start saving money right away – which means it’s time to start using wireless inventory management.
Topics: oates and co, RFID, radio frequency, inventory management, inventory, john shepperson, data transfer, wireless inventory, wireless inventory management
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of radio frequencies to transfer data. The radio frequencies are then used to automatically identify people or objects. There is more than one way to do so, but the most widely used method is to store a person or object’s serial number on a microchip. The microchip is attached to an antenna – known as RFID transponder or an RFID tag – and the antenna enables the chip to transmit information to a reader. The reader reads the radio waves and sends them to a computer. Unlike bar codes, the RFID tags do not have to be in line of sight with the reader.
RFID is not necessarily better than bar codes, however. Although their uses sometimes overlap, they are two different technologies. The biggest difference, as we mentioned, is the line-of-sight factor – a scanner has to see a bar code to read it, which involves people physically locating inventory and scanning it. Radio frequency identification, by contrast, doesn’t require line-of-sight. As long as a reader is in range – and readers have extremely long ranges – RFID tags can be read.
Topics: oates and co, automation, tracking, RFID, radio frequency, automating processes, inventory management, john shepperson
