Stock control software and the benefits of automatic purchase orders

Good retail management software will contain several different modules that cover every aspect of your business, from point-of-sale to accounts and stock control. Stock control isn’t exactly the most glamorous area of retail management, but in a product-based sector efficient stock control is vital to gaining trade. To keep customers coming back to your store, they have to know that the product they want is in stock. If you’ve had a history of stock problems, you’re potentially putting off customers from returning to you and choosing your business over its competitors. Stock control software is becoming an essential part of retail management, as the amount of time electronic stock checks and automatically generated purchase orders can save you is significant. We explore this benefit and the many other advantages of generating purchase orders automatically…

The foundations

Knowing when to order more stock requires detailed knowledge of your remaining stock and how quickly it’s selling. Stock control software automatically updates stock figures when new deliveries come in or customers purchase products, so you can be sure of accurate data at all times. This is in stark contrast to having to carry out manual stock checks – which take up an inordinate amount of time and may not achieve precise results anyway. Knowing stock figures are reliable is the first step towards successful stock control. Once you have the foundations in place, the benefits of automatically generated purchase orders become even stronger…

Time

If you’re able to automatically generate purchase orders for replenishing stock, you no longer need to set aside a chunk of time each day or week to send out orders. Instead, you’ll need to spend a short amount of time setting up the automatically generated purchase orders, and perhaps a little time here and there adjusting the figures – but apart from that, you’re free to spend the time managing your business elsewhere. Now you can spend more time recommending products to customers, training your staff and keeping your social media accounts and website up to date.

Sales

Customers can’t buy empty shelves! When business is brisk, you might not have the chance to order in fresh stock, but if your purchase orders are sent off automatically, you can guarantee that sales won’t be impacted by a lack of stock. Conversely, because you can set purchase orders to only generate when you reach a certain stock level for each product, you won’t have an overflowing stockroom filled with outdated products, or shelves stacked to breaking point with unsellable goods.

Suggestions

Our stock control software is even able to offer recommendations for setting up automatic purchase orders, based on stock levels and the rate at which stock is selling. These order suggestions may help you spot popular products that you missed yourself. You won’t need to rely on your employees’ hunches about fast selling products – stock control software gives you the data to judge the validity of your own instincts. Automated purchase orders let you act on this data.

Integrity Trader software provides complex retail management solutions for retailers in many different sectors. If you’re interested in the other benefits of retail software and would like to see them in action, contact us for a demonstration.