A useful inventory management system can do so much more than just show an increase in your inventory when your items are received and a decrease in your inventory when items are sold.
The Successware® software allows you to track inventory within smaller warehouses (like company trucks), build comprehensive stock lists, assist you with restocking and physical stock checks and create inventory requisitions and receipts!
Effectively tracking your inventory using Successware will help your company ensure you have all the right equipment where you need it when you need it. Let's take a more in-depth look at how the Successware inventory manager can improve the logistical processes of your company:
Easily Create Your Warehouses
When you start working with our Successware inventory manager, the first thing to do is to set up all your warehouses. You may be thinking— "but we only have one warehouse?"
A warehouse doesn't refer to just your brick and mortar "main warehouse" - a warehouse can be anything that contains inventory! For example, a service truck can be a warehouse too, as it's really just inventory on wheels.
Using Successware software, you can easily create new warehouses to track your inventory. If the warehouse you are creating is a truck, you just mark the "vehicle" tab when you create the new warehouse. This will then eliminate the ability to add physical address information and add the option to add the vehicle's information (like its license plate or number your company refers to it).
Build Your Comprehensive Stock Lists
Once you have all your warehouses created, it's time to enter in all the stock information.
Using the inventory manager, you can add items and enter other pertinent information— like where a piece of inventory is located within the warehouse (for example, bin #3 on the lower left-hand side of the truck). You also have the ability to add minimum amounts (your restock point) and maximum amounts (for example, maybe only six items can fit in bin #3).
If you have multiple warehouses with the same or similar items, you can import inventory lists from one warehouse to another. This can make creating multiple warehouses much quicker, requiring only minor tweaks instead of a complete recreation of a warehouse!
Effortlessly Move Inventory Between Warehouses
The Successware inventory manager makes it simple to move inventory from one place to another. You can restock a truck from the main warehouse using the minimum and maximum you set up or based on usage. If you choose to restock based on usage, you can bring up a list of what the technician used and only restock those items.
The software will warn you if any transfers are going to put your main warehouse in the negative so you can make adjustments as needed. One specific way the software can help you find a solution is by showing a specific item listed in all the warehouses at once. That way, if you don't have an item left in the main warehouse's inventory, you can see if other smaller warehouses (like another truck) have a surplus that you can pull the item from.
Once you've changed what items need to be moved, you can save the list or print it out for those in the warehouse to make the necessary changes. Technicians can also mark items as received once they are added to their trucks/warehouses.
Perform Physical Inventories Seamlessly
Physical inventories can be the stuff nightmares are made out of— but they don't need to be stressful.
The inventory manager can break physical inventories into manageable steps with "cycle" inventories. For example, you can choose to print off an inventory list with just a certain type of item or just a certain percentage of the inventory. We also recommend organizing all your equipment under a specific label so you can easily inventory your equipment category every month.
Once you have determined the items that are to be inventoried, you can use the software to create a logical route for employees to follow while completing the inventory. That way, they won't be wasting time running back and forth but can follow the clear route you set in place!
While inventorying, it can be helpful also to write down serial numbers. These serial numbers can be entered into the Inventory Manager. The red circle with the # symbol shows you which items have been serialized in the software.
Now that everything is inventoried, the software will automatically make adjustments up or down when you enter the quantities so you can see what's missing— or what missing items might have been found!
Create New Requisitions and Receipts
Once your Inventory Manager is set up, it can easily be linked with other software to make inventory tracking simple from the quote stage of a project all the way through completion!
When a sales representative creates a detailed quote, this quote can later be used to create an invoice in the Inventory Manager. You can then go through the items in the quote line by line and make sure they are correct for the items needed for the job.
The system will automatically create "inventory tags" for the items in the invoice to show that while they are in inventory, they are "reserved" and not available for use. This can help others in the company see what items are reserved for what projects and if more of an item needs to be ordered, even though physically, the item is in the inventory.
Once the item has been used, the "resolved" tag can then be marked to show the item was used. If the item wasn't used and can go back into inventory, mark the box "return back to available inventory."
Once this process is complete, creating a receipt is simple and easy— all the information is already there!
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