What’s Hurting Small Businesses and How Smart Stock Control Software Can Help

Poor stock management is one of several challenges to small business causing disproportionate harm and difficulty. 

Luckily solutions are here, beginning with smart stock control software such as StockTrim. 

One study from the financial services company U.S. Bank found the following are causing cash-flow problems for small businesses every year: 

• Impulsive spending during the startup phase, causing ripples in the next quarter

• Failure to get on top of late receivables

• Lack of a cash-flow budget

• Not having cash reserves

The fifth biggest issue, the study found , is overestimating the volumes of sales your business can expect in future. This causes massive upset to inventory as it can be harder to forecast stock needs. 

Business Planner and Angel Investor Tim Berry told Entrepreneur magazine recently that overestimating future sales volumes with relentless optimism is one of the greatest dangers to small business cash flow because realistic sales and inventory forecasting can only be based on historical evidence and real numbers. 

Better management of your inventory and its costs can be achieved by using the right software programs

• Forecasting through an app like StockTrim lets you predict the relationship between sales and inventory
• Lead time to stock the product can be ironed out so you don’t disappoint customers
• Use smart stock control software and prices can be adjusted according to scarcity
• You’re not going to be hit with surprise costs when desperately trying to fill orders
• Lower leasing costs on your warehouse if its occupancy is consistent
• Stock software lets you keep records of margin stocking fees, co-promotion fees and administration costs.
• Link your stock control and inventory management costs with your accounts in Xero, Unleashed, TradeGecko, Shopify and other applications
• Bootstrappers in particular can’t afford to overspend budgets, which is why pulling down metrics and reports from StockTrim is so important

Want to make inventory less costly and time-consuming? Here are the constantly recurring problems and some suggested solutions. 

1. Inventory Tracking inaccuracies

Miscounting stock can occur during receiving, order fulfillment or other parts of the supply chain. 

Solution: StockTrim’s electronic data interchange (EDI), which integrates with related solutions, talks to the other software in the supply chain. Best sellers in particular need extremely accurate counting and recording. 

2. Excessive Inventory

The cost of floor and shelf space puts major pressure on small businesses, and it’s even more challenging when those leasing costs are chewed up by stocking product which isn’t selling. 

Solution: Project how much supply you'll need with metrics on your StockTrim dashboard. Also identify and put numbers on time-related patterns which might not seem so obvious, such as month-end spikes.

3. Lack of a backup plan if anything happens to your spreadsheets or hardware

Solution: Backup copies of your inventory data should be saved on platforms including StockTrim. 

4. Most lucrative sales SKUs aren’t standing out due to poor management of data

Solution: It’s estimated 80% of demand can be generated by 20% of items any business typically sells. This is why "A" items sales need to be forecast on your StockTrim dashboard and labelled accordingly, which corresponding adjustment, filing and labelling of items which are proven to sell less based on sales data.  

Your smart stock control software solution can be found at https://www.stocktrim.com/trial