To see our product designed specifically for your country, please visit the United States site. One great thing about Brightpearl is that it’s built specifically for higher transaction volumes. Brightpearl is an excellent alternative for users migrating away from Stitch Labs. Stitch Labs was recently bought by Square and will end operations in Spring 2022. Sortly offers a free version, or you can get started with a free trial of their advanced or ultra version.

If you handle inventory in your own facility or store, first organize and identify storage areas, such as racks, shelves and bins, then assign each product to a specific area. So, with a glance at the SKU, employees know exactly what an item is and other key bookkeeping for startups details such as where it’s stored and how it displays or ships. Square POS is a free system with a full suite of inventory tools that help you track all types of product data. Businesses that use FIFO make an effort to sell older stock before newer stock.

The benefits of keeping inventory

If there is a quality control issue or a discrepancy with a purchase order, having a good relationship with your supplier can help resolve these issues quickly. While it can be done manually, the easiest solution is to use a software program to automate your inventory management process. Our recommended inventory management solution for most retailers is Lightspeed. It reduces the amount of control you have over your supply chain and the quality of the product. Letting your customers deal directly with your suppliers can also make the purchasing process feel less personal, and many dropshipping suppliers forego customer service entirely. After you’ve been in business for a few months, you should start to notice patterns in your sales data.

Depending on the size of your business, you might do these on a semi-annually, quarterly or even monthly basis. While tools like a POS or dedicated inventory management software can help to simplify inventory management and allow you to get more value from your data, you still need an overarching process in place. Two of the most popular methods are First In, First Out (FIFO) and the average cost method. With a POS system, outside of creating your product catalog (typically done once during initial setup) and receiving new stock, inventory management is an automated process.

Small Business Inventory Templates

It’s critical for small businesses to reliably and cost-effectively manage their inventory. There are a few different ways that small businesses can keep track of inventory for free. Depending on the size of the business and the complexity of the inventory, one method may be better than another. However it happens, shrinkage is a very costly problem for retailers and can result in a loss of profit. And it’s a double hit — you can’t recoup the cost of inventory and you can’t sell the inventory to make revenue. There are four main categories of inventory shrinkage due to loss and theft.

Inventory management is part of the supply chain, and can be defined with a phrase often used in food service, just-in-time delivery. The ultimate goal is to have the exact amount of inventory needed at any given time. With proper management, merchandise customers want is always available when they want it, and no slow-moving good are aging in the warehouse. For example, purchasing products or raw materials that sit on shelves means that the benefit or value of the dollars invested in those materials is not being realized. On the other hand, not having enough inventory to meet customer demand can result in lost sales. Inventory management looks at how much stock to order and when to order it.