What Is an Inventory Control System?
An inventory management system is a software solution that integrates every aspect of controlling a company’s inventories and office supplies such as purchasing, receiving, re-ordering, shipping, warehouse storage, tracking, and turnover.
A successful office, regardless of size, customer base or product line, relies heavily on efficient use of various resources such as projects, equipment, supplies, assets and employees. It’s vital to keep a close eye on these to ensure they work in harmony to keep your business running smoothly. But since there’s only so many hours in the day and not enough resources to pay attention to every single detail in your operation, a proper inventory software solution can do the rest.
The key purpose of a stationery inventory management system is to ensure you have enough office supplies to meet the needs of your company and its customers. Netgen has successfully built a number of custom systems for clients.
How Does an Inventory Control System Work?
With the help of stationery control software for your office, you can get the most out of all your resources and keep your employees who use it accountable for the information entered. You can also be aware of office supplies and every single item that comes into and leaves your warehouse at any given time. Stationery control systems help you to manage the following aspects of your business.
Inventory
Even the most basic office supplies like toner and paper help to keep an office running efficiently, so don’t risk a bottleneck by running out of stock. Automated purchase orders enable you to set reorder points so you have your daily necessities available all the time.
Assets
You have a lot of things in your business that needs to be tracked like electronic equipment, tables and chairs to ensure you make the best use of them. Stationery systems can easily track your assets and keep tabs on their location, leases and maintenance schedules.
Statistics
A stationery inventory management system will provide you with an interface where you can access purchase histories from vendors and customers, work orders, shipping reports and updates as well as update inventory quantities in real-time. Some stationary control systems use normal cell phones to track the stock and do quick stock counts at various points – these are custom development for a number of clients.
Accounting
Keep your office supplies, assets, accounting books, and key employees all on the same page with seamless integration between your inventory management system and accounting software. No more double data entry or jumping between various software platforms when you can use one interface.
What Are the Types of Inventory Control?
There are many different types of inventory control systems available to help you track your warehouse and office inventory. Below are the two primary types of inventory management systems to consider with the main difference being the interval at which inventory data is updated.
Perpetual Inventory System
By far the most favoured inventory control system, the perpetual inventory system allows you to enter data continuously. Every time an order is placed or received, the data is updated right away. Contrary to the periodic inventory system, this system is superior because it enables real-time tracking of stock items and office inventory.
Periodic Inventory System
This system doesn’t keep the information updated consistently. Instead, inventory data is updated after a certain period of time has elapsed — usually quarterly or annually. While this method of inventory management isn’t as efficient, it still appeals to many businesses because it doesn’t require a major investment upfront to set up inventory management software needed to track data of inventory and office supplies.
Why Is Office Inventory Management Important?
If you’re running a successful business, you likely strive to maintain a selection of office supplies to take care of your employees’ office supply needs. This would require consistent office inventory management within a particular accounting period. An accurate office supply inventory list serves multiple purposes. It helps to ensure that you don’t run out or overstock on office supplies, and it enables you to account for office supply purchases properly. Cashflow and payments are controlled by ensuring you have the correct stock at all times.
What Is the Best Program to Keep Track of Inventory?
The business environment today, even small and medium-sized companies rely heavily on automated inventory management systems to keep office supplies and inventory at optimal levels. In actual fact, businesses that use this type of technology to control inventory, are far more likely to succeed than those who use manual or outdated inventory management methods.
If you’re looking for an easy and effective stationery inventory control system, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all program that’s perfect for tracking inventory. It will depend on the following:
- Type of Industry
- Company Size
- Software Functionality Requirements
Automation can impact every phase of inventory control dramatically including counting and tracking inventory items & office supplies, retrieval and recording of storage locations of all items, keeping track of changes in inventory and adapting to inventory needs and handling requirements.
Developing a stationery inventory control system that suits the unique needs of your business is vital to its success. For more information about stationery control systems and developing one of the best inventory software solutions for your company, speak to the team at Netgen today to build you a custom solution.
