- Don’t overspend on too much inventory – look at previous sales, trends, seasonality and make informed decisions on how much inventory to buy and when. If you are just starting out, look at your competition, research and investigate inventory levels. It’s hard to say “no” to the bulk buying prices, but when you have to unload the inventory at major discounts because you bought too much, it ends up costing you more.
- Keep track of your inventory – invest in a point-of-sale software system, count the items when you receive them, enter them in the system accurately so that you know how much you have on hand.
- Analyze your sales – as a general rule, 80% of sales come from 20% of products. Find out which 20% of your products are making you the most money and use that to your advantage.
- Don’t let vendors restock your products – keep track of your own inventory. Vendors don’t know where your profits come from and letting a third party control your inventory could cost you those profits. It might save you time and staff costs, but the effect to your bottom line is greater.
- Back-up your system daily– be prepared for technology fails. You don’t want to lose all of that hard work on a server failure. Using a cloud-based system is ideal, but if you don’t have that option, a USB drive or a drop box account will do the job.
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