Inventory Tracking Tips
Seanalee Greenough avatar
Written by Seanalee Greenough
Updated over a week ago

For instructions on how to perform inventory management please click here to review this KB article.

START FRESH!

Reevaluate your Products, make sure the products you want to track has the setting ‘Is Inventoried’ set to ‘Yes’. Fix Negative Inventory and correct counts. Remove items you no longer plan to sell.

Create a new supplier called Inventory Maintenance and use it to create a Purchase Order to rectify any Negative Inventory you have currently in the system.

Use a Physical Count session to adjust any overstated counts down and use a Purchase Order to bring understated products up to their correct count.

PHYSICAL COUNTS ARE KEY

Work with your staff to set up a schedule to perform full Physical Count sessions on a regular basis. This will allow you to respond to shrinkage much more effectively. Once you identify an item that is experiencing shrinkage you can count that item more frequently to ascertain the cause. Below is a graph using data from the National Retail Federation that details different shrink causes.

This might be concerning at first, but the good news is that the three major contributors of shrink are all things that you can actively work to prevent.

  1. Shoplifting - This is by far the easiest explication for when items disappear, but is only barely the most common reason. Motivate your staff to always engage your customers. This tells honest customers that your staff is concerned about their needs and dishonest customers that your staff are on their game. Consider investing in asset protection systems like locking pegs, hard tags, etc.

  2. Employees - This may be the hardest thing to swallow, and the percentage above is for the retail industry as a whole, not your studio. However, there may be unintentional shrink happening because of your staff. For example, it might be best to purchase bottled water specifically for staff use compared to having them purchase the bottled water you offer your customers as well.

  3. Administrative - Within zingfit, this type of shrink can be in the form of an incorrect PO, not receiving the correct amount from the supplier, a mistake on a Physical Count session, etc. Create a documented process for your Inventory Tracking and ensure that everyone involved in that process understands their role.

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