For a retail business, the stocks you have in your store servers are one of the most important aspects. As a retailer, a large part of your job includes being in control of merchandise and ensuring you have the right products at the right time. In fact, nothing can bring your business down like carrying the wrong amount of inventory. This is where inventory management comes in. 

Inventory management is the process of ordering, tracking, and managing your stocks. 

Why is Inventory Management Important?

As a retail business owner, it is imperative to stay on top of your inventory to keep your business up and running. When you manage your inventory, you are able to maintain stocks that sell and reduce the ones that don’t. This will help you make sure you have the products in your stock that your customers are frequently buying and, in turn, make more sales and profit.

Being out of stock on products does not only affect your sales but also makes you lose your customers. With proper insight into your stock, you can avoid such situations and retain your customers by offering them their favorite products. 

Moreover, with proper inventory management in place, you can reduce the chances of shrinkage, which is the reduction in inventory due to theft or admin error. 

Why is POS the Best Way to Manage Inventory?

There are several ways of managing inventory. Some retailers stick to the old-school way and use paper receipts, records, and clipboards. Others go a bit advance and make use of a clipboard. Nevertheless, the best way to manage your inventory, especially in the digitized era we are living in, is implementing stock control through a point of sale system.

A point of sale system, also known as POS, is a technology that goes beyond the traditional cash register to offer a more sophisticated way of managing sales, inventory, reports, and administer customer loyalty programs. For a retail business that sells online or through brick-and-mortar stores, investing in a good POS system can be one of the most beneficial decisions.

A POS with a strong inventory management feature can help you streamline your business process by keeping your sales and stock data in sync. Whenever there is a sale in your store, the POS will automatically update your catalog to match the product quantity you have in your store. This automated process essentially eliminates the need to manually update records every time you make a sale. 

Moreover, POS inventory management also reduces human errors since most of the operations related to managing stocks are overtaken by the system. Lastly, a POS system can quickly produce reports and allow you to get a view of important metrics so you can make key decisions to scale your business performance. 

How does POS Help you Manage Inventory?

Now that we have understood what inventory management is, why it is so important, and why a POS system could be the best solution for it, let’s take a look at some of the specific tools you can use to best manage your inventory:

Your inventory management database contains all the information about your products, including:

• Product name
• Description
• Category
• Supply price
• Retail price
• SKU number
• Barcode number
• Quantity
• Supplier

The database can be extremely helpful in finding out information about specific products as well as add and update your catalog. A good POS system also comes with a purchase order generator tool, which you can use to create invoices to send to your vendor. 

An accurate reporting and analytics tool also comes with most POS, using which you can have clear and error-free information on your best-sellers, slow-movers, most profitable products, and the items that are low on stock. Such information can help you make effective decisions regarding the growth and scalability of your business. 

Advantages of Using POS for Inventory Management

As mentioned above, using a proper POS system is one of the best decisions a business can make, regardless of the type of business it is. If you run a business that sells products, inventory management through a POS system can help you save time, money, and resources.

Here are some of the major advantages of using a POS system for inventory management:

Here are some of the major advantages of using a POS system for inventory management:

• Automation of inventory management

  A POS system automates the task of inventory management, so you don’t have to manually update the data. This can help business keep their inventory in the best shape and their customers happy.

• Automatic report generation

  POS can generate both sales and inventory reports accurately at any given time, allowing you to get a deeper insight into your business trends.

• Increases business profitability

  Since POS helps in lowering the ordering and carrying cost of inventory with proper inventory management, your business is bound to increase its profit margin and scale through new heights.

• Remote management

  For businesses with more than one location, a POS system can help keep track and maintain stocks across multiple stores. 

Final words

Both the retail and restaurant industry is getting incredibly competitive, which means it is more important than ever to keep your inventory in the best shape. Fortunately, there are a number of systems and tools available in the market for proper inventory management. We recommend looking through them and selecting the ones that best suit your unique needs. Explore the plethora of options to find out which POS system works best for your inventory management so you can retain your customers and grow your business with ease.