The end of the year is an important moment for companies in the retail sector when it comes to managing their warehouses. It is the time to roll up your sleeves and be patient to do the traditional physical inventory that takes so many hours and time for many businesses of all sizes and activities, which is complicated when you have several warehouses.
Legal Obligations In Stock Management
The first reason, perhaps not the most important, but the one that prevents us from giving up, is that it is mandatory. Every entrepreneur must keep an orderly accounting appropriate to the activity of his company that allows a chronological follow-up of all his operations, as well as the periodic preparation of balance sheets and inventories.
He will necessarily keep a book of Inventories and Annual Accounts and another Journal without prejudice to what is established in the laws or special provisions. In this way, all organizations (SMEs, Micro-SMEs, and the self-employed included) must carry out a physical inventory by the end of the year to present said book.
Accurate Stock Control Key For Companies In The Retail Sector
Over time, it is common for part of the assets to go astray, and where your internal control says you should have 100 units, you only have 90. This is usually mainly due to the following:
- Goods receipts in the warehouse with incorrect information or pending registration. It is not strange that some delivery notes do not coincide with the received material, and this is where an error begins that, if not detected at the time, remains present from minute zero.
- Confuse some items with others. This can occur both in the inputs and outputs of material. If the person in charge makes a mistake, either due to ignorance or due to an error in the pace of work, it can cause a double failure in your stock and can cause a headache even though the product is still in the warehouse; even more so if there is a difference in price between the item we think we have and the one we have.
- Administrative errors in recording amounts. Not only can an error occur in the type of product, but also when reporting the quantities, an error can occur, even though everything above is correct, and where I wanted to put a 5, I put a 6.
- Products that leave the warehouses without registering with the corresponding document. This may be due to employee fraud (or “gifts”) or a clerical error.
- Theft or robbery. It doesn’t sound good, but businesses often suffer from these problems more than we think or would like. External people can cause this, but it is usually caused by internal staff.
- Throw away products no longer valid for the company’s activity without giving the corresponding cancellation (expired, with defects, etc.).
What Costs Do We Avoid With The Digitization Of Warehouse Management
This is possibly the most important reason for carrying out this inventory. And is that not having accurate control of the stock of the different materials that you have in your warehouse will generally translate into costs:
- Image costs: when we tell a client that we can supply an item within a given period and that ultimately this is not the case as it is not available, this will inevitably cause a problem of trust in the relationship with that client, even though later it may be more or less sympathetic.
- Costs in time: When discovering where the error has led you to give that incorrect information, different people will have to waste their time. And they will also lose it by having to perform a job a second time to correct it.
- Economic costs: having to acquire the materials you lack may include the aggravating circumstance that the price of that product is higher than what you had valued. This last point is even more sensitive now that the problem of supply and rising energy prices have been a recurring theme in recent months.
Sage 200 Advanced. A Perfect Management System For The Retail Sector
This is the key point that we at Integra like to make available to you. Technology allows us not only to have a computerized record of stock but also to give us the possibility, with an integrated system such as SAGE 200 Advanced, of having all the information connected to all the info: purchases, all warehouse movements, manufacturing, sales, and accounting.
In addition, for those who want to go a step further, this ERP has an integrated solution for advanced warehouse management or SGA. In addition to responding to all the problems I have mentioned, it optimizes resources and simplifies logistics processes. This software will offer these customers:
- Information in real-time and constantly updated.
- Space optimization. In busy warehouses, the WMS suggests possible locations for the products received.
- Improves operator productivity by using mobile devices that speed up processes and allow the optimal route to be calculated in the preparation of orders. This translates into an increase in the company’s competitiveness.
- Full traceability. By giving you control of batches, expiration dates, and incidents in the transfer of locations.
- Reduction of costs caused by errors. Eliminating the use of paper and having automation in operations will reduce manual errors.
Conclusions
Implementing a management system can mean your business’s qualitative and quantitative improvement. The digitization of products and processes is necessary to remain competitive in an increasingly volatile market. We must use technology to make our day-to-day work much easier and more efficient with solutions focused on the retail sector.
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