Using Trader to manage supply chain and deliveries

With stock control software, you can have more control over elements of your supply chain.

Almost every retail business relies on an extensive supply chain in order to operate at full capacity. While many elements of the supply chain are outside of the control of a builders’ merchant or hardware store, management of the supply chain remains key. Of course, builders’ merchants aren’t necessarily the end of the supply chain – deliveries to customers also need to be managed efficiently. Trader doesn’t only speed up point of sale processes – it’s retail software that manages all aspects of a merchant’s stock control, inventory management and deliveries, allowing you to manage the supply chain as effectively as possible. How does it work?

Cut the paperwork

One of the biggest barriers to a well-managed supply chain is the sheer amount of paperwork that is required to keep things in order. When creating manual invoices, purchase orders, quotations and other documents, you use up plenty of time that could be better spent elsewhere. When checking the progress of orders and tracking customer accounts, the difficulty of working with manual documents crops up once more. If you use a spreadsheet to track your finances, you have to input every invoice into the spreadsheet manually. For a thriving merchant business, this can take hours or even days every week. By using software that integrates all of these functions in one and creates electronic documents, you’ll save a great deal of time and be able to monitor payments and processes far more easily.

Managing deliveries

Stock control and delivery management are key processes for merchants. Software enables you to keep track of stock levels and speeds up the stock counting process. It even enables the automatic creation of purchase orders once stock falls below a certain level. These processes are most effective when coupled with delivery management. It is important to have a fully accurate record of pending deliveries, including expected delivery dates. You can then keep track of which suppliers are most likely to keep their delivery promises. If you encounter any serial offenders, you may wish to investigate alternative suppliers to ensure that your supply of stock is more predictable.

Delivering to customers

It’s not just deliveries to your business that you need to manage. Your customers will also expect reliable and timely deliveries of goods. It’s important to track these deliveries and identify any problems as quickly as possible. In the winter months, it’s particularly important to have a reliable system in place to manage customer deliveries. Be sure to implement a plan of action for deliveries when bad weather strikes and your drivers are delayed.

Point-of-sale software isn’t able to give you control over every single party in the supply chain, but it can be used to accurately monitor many components of it – giving you the data you need to manage it effectively. Ditch tardy suppliers, automatically check invoices and improve deliveries to your customers.

Find out more about Trader’s many features and get in touch to arrange a free demonstration of our point-of-sale software, designed specifically for merchants.