Stock Management Guide Trusted by 10,000+ businesses #1 Rated EPoS System 1
Managing your stock Markets dominated by larger, more established organisations can seem impenetrable to small businesses, as they cannot compete with the vast promotional budgets and economies of scale required to succeed. With margins so tight, stock management is vital to ensure businesses are able to remain profitable. Good stock management ensures stock moves efficiently through your business, without overstocking. Ultimately, you will increase sales, maximise profits, improve customer satisfaction, and safeguard a unique identity that customers can remain loyal to. Stock management is vital to keeping costs down, and improving the efficiency and profits of your business. Many businesses order excess stock to ensure they never run out of stock, however, this causes a number of problems: It increases food and drink wastage and prevents you from bringing in fresh stock, therefore increasing profit loss. It increases your carrying costs (rent, interest, utility costs, insurance, taxes). It overwhelms your customer with too much choice, which studies have shown to lower sales. Stock Lookup A good stock management system will allow your sales team to quickly look up items for customers in-store and across your other store locations. Eighty percent of retailers who have implemented this say that these tools have increased sales. 2 #1 rated EPoS system
Streamline Your Processes Studies suggest that businesses face higher risk of bankruptcy when carrying excessive stock. Too much stock can lead to excessive discounting, which eats into your profits. On the other hand, not carrying enough inventory will cause you to miss sales opportunities, leading to lower revenue and dissatisfied customers. The Epos Now stock management facility allows you to streamline the stock ordering process by automatically raising purchase orders, and easily managing interlocation stock transfers. It also has the capability to manage weight and measures of stock. Having complete awareness of your stock levels will eliminate many unnecessary and laborious stock takes. Minimise food and drink wastage and therefore prevent profit losses by efficiently monitoring all items of stock, whilst ensuring your best-selling products are always stocked up. Accurately tracking your stock will allow you to view detailed data, that will help with future buying decisions. It will provide you with detailed evidence allowing you to negotiate with suppliers, whilst also increasing your visibility and predictability of your business. An automated stock management system will ultimately improve sales and profitability by saving you time and money, as well as preventing errors and increasing the overall efficiency of your business. The data an EPoS system can provide allows you to view your best and worst performing products, manage your discounts and focus on brands and products with the highest profit margins. You can also monitor stock levels of multiple locations, so if sales of certain products are much higher in one location, then the decision can be made to transfer stock from it s current location to another. This procedure will help to cut down on missed sales opportunities, while preventing you from unnecessarily ordering excess stock. Stock Import Save time by importing your stock directly into the Epos Now software. Whether you have externally created a spreadsheet or have the data on your previous system, you can save time and effort by eliminating the need to manually enter product descriptions, costs, and selling prices. 3 #1 rated EPoS system
Minimise Shrinkage The term shrinkage means any stock that is lost to damage, theft, misplacement, or errors in paperwork. Stock shrinkage can reduce your margins significantly, depending on the type of business you run. The need to reduce losses caused by shrinkage is critical in the success of a business. According to research, 15.3% of stock lost to shrinkage was caused by clerical errors. Although it is difficult to prevent theft or merchandise damage, you can ensure you have full control over clerical processes. Keeping your data correct and current will reduce your shrinkage significantly, consequently increasing your profits. A great way to keep track of your stock is by using an automated stock management system, which will give you a detailed overview of your stock and in turn dramatically reduce these mistakes. You will be able to predict customer demand and ensure that you have ordered enough stock by examining historical sales, and bringing this information with you when you meet with suppliers. The Epos Now system provides access to comprehensive sales reports, which enables you to have all of your important data at your fingertips and will better prepare you to make important buying decisions. You will have access to the information that will tell you which products sell the fastest and you can automate your re-ordering process when stock runs low. You can also compare sales from specific time periods to make sure you order the right amounts of stock for the month or season. Click & Collect Research shows that when customers pick up an online order in-store it can lead to an increase of 1.8 percent in total sales. The Epos Now integration with Nettl allows SME s to synchronise their in-store stock with their website stock levels, enabling you to provide an efficient Click & Collect service, and allows you to compete with larger businesses. Click & Collect is set to take over home delivery and is much more cost effective for you as a business too. 4 #1 rated EPoS system
Conclusion To ensure the right stock is moving at an optimal rate, independent businesses need to track stock data accurately, without consuming large amounts of time managing spreadsheets and bulky binders full of paper. A centralised stock system can save you time and money, allows you to focus your stock management techniques and helps get products to your customers in the most efficient way possible. Putting a good EPoS system in place ensures best practices in stock management and this setup will allow you keep a watchful eye on your profit margins, closely monitor shrinkage, and will ensure you have the tools to efficiently identify and manage aging stock. Maintaining these best practices at your store will help you bring in the stock that your customers want and keep it fresh. About Epos Now Epos Now design and build their own hardware and software to ensure that customers have the best solution to suit their business. Epos Now s aim is to constantly improve and evolve their products and this means that customers always have an input in the changes and improvements that are made. Customers are given the tools to build, manage and grow their businesses and to create an overall better experience for their customers. The Epos Now system combines point of sale, stock management, customer management and data analytics, whilst striving to help customers of all sizes to succeed in rapidly growing markets. Over 3,000,000,000+ transactions processed 350% average company growth year on year Trusted by over 10,000 businesses We are Number 1 Eighty Five + employees 103 Countries using our system Highest rated POS company online Accounts Integration Further improve the efficiency of your business by integrating your accounting software with your EPOS system. Epos Now integrates with Xero and Sage software, which will save you time and money. Not only will the software allow you to keep on top of your finances, without the need for a bookkeeper, but will also automatically synchronise suppliers, customers and products with your chosen software to ensure complete accuracy. 5 #1 rated EPoS system
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