The end of the year is approaching, and with it for many businesses comes inventory time when you need to count and make a record of your supplies. Inventory is essential to a business to help set a budget and to track any unnecessary spending and look for shrinkage, but it can be hard to do when your supplies and stock are a big mess. To prepare you for the upcoming inventory time, here are some tips to help you get organized.
Organize Your Office Supplies
One of the most important parts of preparing for inventory is to set up an organization system with your supplies. When office supplies or stock in your store are left on shelves and in boxes randomly, it makes inventorying them difficult. Install stackable shelves, which you can use to organize and separate differing items from one another.
You can find stackable bins of large or small sizes to fit each stored item appropriately. For example, if you need to keep track of your printer's extra toner cartridges, these can all go inside a stackable bin. Or, if there are cans of computer cleaner or paper towels, they can each be organized together in a stackable bin.
Keep a Record
It can be helpful when managing your inventory to keep a written log of any items that are taken from the inventory and when items are added through orders to the supplies. Many offices and businesses will chose to use a FIFO (first in, first out) storage management, especially as it rotates the stock to use the oldest supplies first.
When this FiFO is implemented in your record keeping, you can also see how often you use specific supplies and if you need to keep less inventory on hand. For example, if you only use an item once a year, you can reduce the inventory and your storage costs by not reordering as often to carry fewer items in stock.
Designate a Supply Manager
Lastly, you need to designated someone who will manage the flow of supplies and inventory from a supply closet or storage room. Having one person as the supply manager makes it easier to ensure a record is made of each occurrence an employee requests and takes an item from the supplies.
Having a supply manager also makes it helpful in reordering, as one person makes the reordering decisions based on inventory use. If you were to have several employees managing and handling reordering, you can likely get duplicate inventory orders, as each employee would reorder printer toner, for example, when the stock is running low. For more information, look at this website.
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