How to Manage Warehouse Inventory

When you’ve got stock piled up in a warehouse, it can be difficult to manage it all unless you have a savvy organisation plan in place. Keeping your warehouse inventory up-to-date is one of the keys to running a successful business. You’ll avoid unnecessary purchases, excess stock and long, hard-working hours which haven’t amounted to anything. Here are some things to think about when managing your warehouse inventory.

Keep Your Stock Inventory Accurate

One of the best ways to keep track of your own inventory is to use a spreadsheet. Keep track of what stock you’ve got and how much of it you have. You’ll soon find out what your bestsellers are and as a result, you can keep an easy record of when you’re running low.

This is of course just a starting point. In the future, as your business continues to grow you can invest in an inventory management system which would automate reordering and prevent duplication of orders.

There is also inventory tracking software which will let you know where your specific stock is. This is especially useful if you’re keeping your stock in more than one location.

Consider the Layout of Your Stock

Once you’ve chosen the warehouse best for you and had a walk around it, the next question to ask yourself is how would you organise it?

First things first, your high in demand items need to be easily accessible. You’ll want to place them as close to the front of the warehouse as possible, perhaps close to the door, so you know where it all is. The less popular products or seasonal items can be stored towards the back of the warehouse.

You’ll want to make sure that the warehouse is large enough, not only to store all of your stock, but to also move around and manoeuvre large items if needed. Floor-to-ceiling shelves give you a lot of vertical space to work with, whilst allowing a lot of floor space to move and replenish stock when needed.

Organise Your Warehouse Stock

Similar to how you would want a straightforward layout for your warehouse stock, you’ll want to make sure all your stock is organised too.

Stock management is super important as you’ll need to know how much stock you have and organise it a certain way so that rotating excess stock is easy.

Shelves are one of the best ways to organise your warehouse stock. Use clearly labelled boxes or containers and stack them on the shelves. That way you can easily see how much of each product you have available.

Remember to place heavy items on the lower shelves to limit the damage should anything fall. Lighter items can be stored on the higher shelves.

Many of our warehouses will have forklift trucks available to help you access and move heavy objects around. There may also be pallet trucks and stepladders available to help you access items. Just make sure you find a warehouse that has all the features you need!

When replenishing stock and organising due to excess stock, move older items to the top or front and newer stock underneath or to the back.

This organisation is key to quick and easy access to your stock, so you can get it to your customers on time and make sure that older stock gets used up.

What to Look For in a Warehouse

Many people choose to store their stock in a warehouse for a number of reasons: safety and security, cost efficiency, flexibility and accessibility. When your business is growing and you need more space, it just makes sense to invest in a warehouse.

On Stashbee you can find a wide variety of warehouses of different sizes across the country to suit the size of your business. Plus, we know that investing in a warehouse is a huge deal. That’s why you can let us know you’re interested in a warehouse and then we’ll have a chat with you. We’ll get to know your wants and needs so we know exactly what you’re looking for.

Then, we also take care of all the admin. You don’t need to worry about all the boring paperwork stuff. We’ll connect you with the Host of the warehouse, but we’ll deal with all the things you don’t want to.

Simple and smart, we know you wouldn’t want it any other way. Let us help you find the warehouse you need for your business storage today!