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Read MoreWholesale Inventory Management - The Guide
By Nick Spooner
CEO at Salesorder.com | Software and expertise for wholesaler optimization
As a wholesale business, you have a lot to keep track of.
Wouldn’t you agree?
It’s a normal expectation, then, that things might slip through the cracks. The mistakes are usually not your fault and can quickly be rectified.
However, there is one problem all wholesale businesses need to avoid above all else… being accused of overpromising and undelivering.
This could do significant and irreversible damage to your brand.
It’s imperative that you avoid this by investing time and attention into accurate wholesale inventory management.
What is Wholesale Inventory Management?
Put simply, wholesale inventory management is the process you use to map and keep track of the stock in your warehouse(s).
It’s a fundamental part of running a wholesale business and is ultimately meant to stop you from selling products that are currently unavailable or lost.
The Purpose of Wholesale Inventory Management
Have you ever been in a situation where your customer wanted a specific product, but you don’t have it because you’ve forgotten to order it?
It’s embarrassing, but we’ve all been there.
Whether you decided to reassure this individual that you’d be able to get it to them within just a few weeks or you decided to be up-front and explain the mistake you made, the fact of the
matter is…
This could have been avoided. That’s what wholesale inventory management is for.
Regardless of your industry, the main purpose of tracking your stock levels is to ensure that you don’t end up with less than you want or more than you want.
Both of these situations can cost you money that would be much better spent elsewhere.
The Importance of Effectively Managing Wholesale Inventory for SMEs
As a wholesale business, then, accurate inventory management is crucial.
It can stop you from making costly mistakes and can even help you optimise your space
management.
1. Customer Relationships
Allowing your customers to order products you don’t actually have could earn you a place on their blacklist. Before you know it, conflict has arisen, complaints have been made, and trust has
been broken. This is nearly impossible to come back from.
2. Cost Cutting
Realistically, not having a good understanding of the assets you have to sell could mean you are spending money where you don’t need to be. If you have products that are claiming space on the shelves without being purchased, you aren’t optimising your sales line.
3. Business Efficiency
By ensuring you have visible stock that is clearly labelled and organised, you can significantly increase productivity and streamline your entire shipping process. This way, when a customer asks if you have a specific product – you’ll be able to answer them with confidence.
Key Considerations for Wholesale Inventory Management
When you start to implement wholesale inventory management into your business operations,
then, there are some factors you need to consider.
1. Space Management
It’s all well and good having a detailed record of the products you have in stock but, unless they can be found easily, then you might as well not bother. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to find something that you know you have in a warehouse and being unsuccessful.
2. Asset Management
When you run into troublesome periods as a business, it’s important that you understand exactly what assets you have at your disposal. This will help you produce accurate financial reports and keep you out of legal hot water.
3. Employee Training
Ultimately, managing a wholesale inventory is nearly impossible without the work and
dedication of your employees. While you can, of course, automate the majority of stock orders nowadays – you need to rely on your team to report things like damages and incorrect deliveries.
4. Software Onboarding
The easiest way to approach wholesale inventory management is to enlist the help of a software application that can do the majority of the work for you. This reduces the pressure placed on your workforce and also decreases the likelihood of human error being made.
How to Manage Wholesale Inventory with Salesorder
With so much to consider and your livelihood potentially being placed on the line, the entire process can seem a little overwhelming.
Where should you even start?
- Do you need to go through your entire warehouse and make a note of what you have?
- Would a spreadsheet be accurate enough for tracking stock sales and deliveries?
- Is there an efficient way of managing wholesale inventory?
Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be as complex as you are making it.
There are versatile platforms out there that have been designed specifically to aid organisations like yours increase stock visibility – no matter the size or scale of operation.
The Benefits of Wholesale Inventory Management through Salesorder
How many software applications do you already use on a day-to-day basis? Quite a few, right?
You might be wondering, then, if it’s worth enlisting another one. Though we might be a little biased, here is our honest answer.
It is.
Unless you want to risk damaging your relationships with customers or directing money where it doesn’t need to be spent, you need an effective approach to managing your wholesale inventory.
You might be wondering, then, if it’s worth enlisting another one. Though we might be a little biased, here is our honest answer.
It is.
Unless you want to risk damaging your relationships with customers or directing money where it doesn’t need to be spent, you need an effective approach to managing your wholesale inventory.
1. Reduces Wastage
As we’ve briefly touched on, incorrect wholesale inventory management can lead to a significant drain of both time and money. Either you place an order for something that you’ve already got hundreds of, or you simply can’t find the product you need in a disorganised warehouse. Salesorder is able to combat this.
2. Provides Oversight
Our platform ensures that you and your employees always have full visibility of your inventory. By not only tracking but actually mapping the stock you have in your warehouse and the products you have on order, you can rest assured that you are providing the right information to your customers – delivering a result they’ll be satisfied with.
3. Real-Time Reporting
When it’s that time of year when you’d like to address your internal processes and look back at the work you’ve done and the sales you’ve made, this is easy through Salesorder’s easy-to-use
dashboard. Every single day, you’ll be able to access detailed business intelligence that’ll prove incredibly useful to you and your team.
4. Accurate Forecasting
Through us, you’ll also be able to produce comprehensive inventory forecasts that will estimate incoming demand. This is perfect for making data-driven decisions and mitigating risk. Rather than purchasing inventory that won’t sell, you’ll have a clear idea of what your customers will be after in the coming months.
5. Single-Source Platform
At the end of the day, Salesorder was designed to do it all. Through our multi-functional platform, wholesale businesses can communicate and sell to their customers, track their inventory, automate stock orders, reduce their accounting administration, and scale their revenue to new heights. Doesn’t that sound ideal?
What is Wholesale Inventory Management? - FAQs
Whether you are just starting out as a business, or have been in the market for ages…
wholesale inventory management is not something that can be ignored.
If done correctly, it can be a huge asset to your company that saves your resources and reduces wastage across your organisation.
If you still have questions about the process, perhaps these FAQs will be able to point you in the right direction. If not, you can read more about wholesale inventory management software here.
- What is the simplest way to manage wholesale inventory?
The easiest answer would be to onboard software that can do the work for you. Aside from this, a detailed spreadsheet could be the solution. You won’t need to train your employees to fill it in and it should be able to give you a good overview of your stock.
- What are the types of inventory management?
While it might not be particularly relevant to a wholesale business, the types of inventory management are raw materials (like lithium), works-in-progress (like a battery), and finished goods (like a mobile phone). You’ll probably only deal with the last.
- Is inventory management and wholesale management the same?
No. Inventory management is entirely focused on tracking the products you have in your warehouse and on order, while wholesale management looks at the entirety of your business as a whole – including customer communications and employee processes like recruitment.
How to Manage Wholesale Inventory through Salesorder
When it comes to wholesale inventory management, Salesorder is unparalleled.
Because we only work with wholesalers (and are proud to do so), you’re in expert hands with our Enterprise Resource Planning software.
No matter what your problem is, you’ll always have access to mission-critical support through your dedicated and experienced account manager.
As you get set up with managing your wholesale inventory, we’ll provide in-depth training and
on-demand access to our learning center for free.
In your quest to understand inventory management software, consider contacting us today. Or, if you have more questions, feel free to leave them below.
“Salesorder.com has allowed us to streamline our order and inventory process. It easily integrated with our websites and allowed us to finally get a handle on the inventory we were holding. They were able to customize things to meet almost all of our needs, being flexible and willing to work with us. It is a great choice for a growing company that needs better software to help them expand.”