Inventory refers to all the goods, items, materials held in stock by a company, that are used in production of main product, including the main products that are taken into market for sale too. It is very important to keep track of all these items to run an efficient and profitable business. When it comes to keeping track of each and every small item, tools, machinery, packing material, everything along with the finished products, keeping in mind if the items are perishable, maintaining manual inventory record is definitely not at all an easy job and can end up in mistakes leading to losses. Here is where
inventory management solution comes to rescue.
So, let’s understand what an
Inventory Management Software Development is. Trusted by traders and manufacturers of all industries, this solution eases down your track cycle right from your purchases to your sales. Inventory has different classifications at different points in the supply chain. Our
cloud based software development solution also enables you to keep a check on your warehouse handlers, transporters, delivery drivers, workers etc by keeping a check at the products at all stages. Manual counting is a tedious task and you can rely on this software even for that.
Going step by step, let’s see what the
different stages of an inventory are.
Raw materials - Lets consider a clothing manufacturer. He would not just stock his ready clothing, but his warehouse will also have stocks of fabric, thread, buttons, tags, packing material etc depending on what all his company handles itself from purchasing of the fabric to manufacturing, packing and selling it to the distributors. All this other than the final finished product is the Raw material.
Unfinished products - Now, the raw materials have been used to manufacture some lots of, say, pants and those are moved to the warehouse before being moved out to be sold. These are the unfinished products that very diligently need to be kept separate from the raw material stock in the warehouse. May be few pants have got their zippers and buttons on and few still need to, these 2 stocks also need to be maintained separately.
En route inventory - Final products of any industry travel miles to reach different distributors in different countries, states, cities etc. The stock that is in transportation vehicles are owned by the company but are not in direct possession for that time. These are the en route inventory. And it’s of utmost importance to keep a check of this stock until the company has the confirmation of complete and safe delivery.
Cycle stock - Let’s consider, the above discussed cloth manufacturing company sends its final product to another company to sew tags on them. The other company receives the products, sews tags and pushes the stock for sale almost immediately. Such stock that moves almost immediately through the supply chain to enter the market for sale is called Cycle stock.
Businesses work on different types of payments terms, advance, credit, EMI's etc , whatever is mutually decided, but throughout this long chain process, maintaining inventory, keeping a check, tracking orders, payments, client queries, catering to their complaints and much more is required to be done efficiently to make your business prosper.
So, we have outlined the concept and stages of inventory. We will read about
"Why Businesses need an Inventory Management Software" in one of our posts.