Reducing Costs in a Restaurant by Effective Inventory Management

It’s easy, and really common, for restaurants spend money over poor inventory management. Beginners are predominantly exposed to this cash drain, as they often do not have their commercial control systems secured, beforehand. But even the best managed, established restaurants have continuing challenges in this area.

A substantial portion of all your operational costs is occupied in the products you purchase. Management of inventory is a way to make the most of every dollar spent, as it helps reduce unwanted, wastage, and overstocking of foodstuffs. A system with upright checks and balances will similarly help eliminate the prospect of theft. These days inventory management is very easy with the help of inventory software for mobile.

Reasons for high food inventory cost

Consider the problems of dealing with food.

• Most of the time, your inventory is not like a bottle of beer at a bar counter. A lot of it is highly fragile. Your ingredients have a narrow shelf life, much of it less than seven days, some as little as just a day or two. In the event of not using a product within this short time means throwing it into the garbage along with more or less your hard-earned income.

• Moreover, you have a lot of individuals, who handle your food roster — from the time your goods are ordered, received, warehoused, prepared and finally served to your customers. Even a lesser eatery may have 10-15 people tangled in the food production procedure. The more people tangled in taking “raw” inventory and changing it to the delivered product, the more challenging it is to control loss, waste and abuse of inventory.

Things that can help in reducing costs

•  Inventory Management Software - Foodstuff inventory management software can make all aspects of the inventory procedure exponentially easier. Watch out for a solution, which is compatible with your assembling, recipe, and invoice systems, so that you can effortlessly monitor the cost of goods sold (COGS), inventory valuation, and inventory trends. Choose a program that’s intuitive and easy to use for each member of your inventory crew. You may even want to study one that permits you to perform physical inventory tallies on smartphones and tablets. Especially, a home inventory app for iPad is very useful software for this.

• Set Inventory Levels - A par level is the smallest quantity of an item you must have in inventory to last until your next delivery. In case, the on-hand quantity is beneath the par level, simply demand what you need to take it back up to the same level. Cycle menus are helpful in establishing accurate par levels. Cross-use will lower the number of stuffs in your inventory. Similarly, be sure to refer to your catalogue data when you’re altering menus, with the aim of lessening the waste. There is a barcode inventory system for iPad that can be used for this.

• Make it Routine - Introduce a set frequency for your inventory tally—weekly, monthly, annually, or even at the end of each business day. The more frequently you count the inventory, the easier it is to recognize and correct problems.

So an effective inventory management system can be really solved to your increasing budget.

Android Inventory Management Software for Chemical Industry

The Android Inventory Management Software is competent to know all the INs and OUTs of your business. Fortunately, we can keep control of our inventory with mobile user-friendly Android Applications which have immediate and accurate access, information of inventories in our hand. We can manage your industry employs, customers, trade show, meetings, suppliers, other managements.

Nowadays, Inventory System iPhone is available in the market, which is helpful to manage chemical industry. Lab Inventory Software can use to track reagents, analytical instruments, disposables, general laboratory and computer hardware. Inventory is common to all industries like biotechnology, chemistry, physics, medicine, education, dentistry, electronics and more. Inventory System for Android offers various types of software and tool which are beneficial in Chemical industries.

By the help of Inventory management, you can easily access and upload, manage laboratory inventory, place orders and keep track them in one place. You can also access this inventory access software from another place which software is available in iPhone, android platform. The software of Lab Inventory can offer the advanced functionality system which is helpful to control your stuff. The Android Inventory Management Software is really user friendly software which is understandable and easy to handle. There are various features and specification of Inventory Management Mobile Apps which are given in below.

1. Lettuce: - This app is useful to capture, payment processing, shipping and tracking, customer relationship management, and sales and order analysis. It eliminates to make redundant entries in the separate system of software packages. This web application is used in desktop, in laptops, in tablets and in mobile phones which provide companion cloud-based web app. The uses of this application are for setting up users, product listing, records of customers, integrating systems and other uses. Lettuce app is a paid application.

2. Goods Order Inventory: - Goods Order Inventory is an inventory management which is designed to manage orders, inventory, sales, products listing, and tenders on your mobile device or on your laptop / desktop. Goods Order Inventory App can avail on iPhone, android, blackberry platform. This application is not integrated with other software and services, but useful to export potentially data and database from similar tool and spreadsheets. Goods Order Inventory System Pro App is a free inventory management system software, which can be used in chemical industries.

3. Canvas: - Canvas is a versatile set of tools which allows data collection forms. Canvas apps are supported on tablets, smart phones to support a wide range of data types, including for inventory. You can easily handle canvas apps on your mobile which is available on iOS platform, blackberry platform and Android platform. To use canvas app, you need to install free canvas smart client application on your Smartphone. Canvas app is available for free trial after 30 days time period you have to pay some amount for Canvas application.

4. Inventory Tracker: - Inventory Tracker application is used to handle out businesses track inventory, sales, payments, shipments and balance sheet data. Spreadsheet export is available as are barcode scanner support, multiple currencies, database backup and many customization options available. The inventory Tracker app is a paid application.

Grocery Store Inventory Management Software

Choosing a right and better Inventory Management Software leads your business towards success. Hence, a pool of companies is working for Inventory Management Software development in various fields like Grocery Store, retails store, supermarket Management Software, billing management software and many more. Inventory Management Software helps to businessman for their management system.

Grocery Store Inventory Management Software is designed by top companies which gives practical powerful outcomes. Grocery Store Inventory Management Software saves the time and enhances the efficiency of grocery business significantly.

What is Inventory Management Software?

Before describing more information about Grocery Store Inventory Management Software, I am willing to describe you what is Inventory Management Software?

Inventory Management Software is the computer based real monitoring system which works on some coding, but in Grocery Store business can use it easily for automatic functionality. It can be used in the manufacturing industry to manage billing, work order and also manage outages and overstock condition in the store. Inventory Management Software is a type of tool which is used to manage and organize inventory data. Before the development of Inventory Management Software, businessmen were user hard copy or spreadsheets for all types of paperwork and management of work.

Features of Grocery Store Inventory Management Software

After knowing about Grocery Store Inventory Management Software, a businessman can easily understand the advantages of this brilliant software system which helps in management. Grocery Store Inventory Management Software has many features like Order management, Asset tracking, Service management and Product identification, billing and store management, outages and overstock management and many more.

There is some purpose to use any type of software why should businessman use the Inventory Management Software? So answers are given below why a businessman can prefer the software to track and manage Grocery Store business.

• This system helps to balance between over inventory and very less inventory.

• This system receives items for Grocery Store from warehouse and other inventory location and also tracks them.

• You can use it in tracking the packing, picking and shipping purposes and also for product sales and inventory level.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

There is a huge number of advantages with some disadvantages of Grocery Store Inventory Management Software.

• Cost savings

• Warehouse organization

• Increased efficiency

• Data security

• Updated data

Every system has some advantages, but not with 100% perfection, so system must have more advantages than disadvantages, so everyone can use them without any loss. Grocery Store Inventory Management Software has some disadvantages like complexity and expensive. This system is very expensive and this system is not so much easy to learn how to use it. But after learning this system, it helps very effectively to Grocery Store Management.

There are many software available in Compare Grocery and Supermarket like ACR System, HighJump software, Retail manager, uTouch POS, Vend software and Nobly.

Buyer Guide for Grocery Store Inventory Management Software:
Before purchasing the system software, the buyer must know about their requirements and about system effectiveness. The buyer must buy that software which can overcome their problems in Inventory Management. In the supermarket there are huge numbers of management software available so buyer should purchase the software which could provide all features and can fulfill the requirements.

Asset and Inventory management in the hotel industry

Hotels are always looking to offer the finest customer experience and facilities. For hotels to attain glowing customer reviews and to inspire new and returning visitors to stay longer, they need good systems in place to manage the things necessary for smooth and effective operation.

Hotel and Hospitality industry is a gigantic industry with huge financial investment and workforce. In 2011 alone, the accommodation industry made $21.6 billion in pre-tax income. Therefore, having a good asset and inventory control system is necessary in many way. Some of the most important points are as follows:

Maintaining a balanced inventory
Hotels usually have incoming supply processes system, where they work with particular vendors so as to receive discounted pricing. Purchases not made from a preferred vendor can be expensive because they don’t replicate discounts or any other benefits. An automatic inventory system helps employees in not purchasing items from anyone other than the favoured system of sellers. Largely, streamlining tasks will helps the lodging house run more professionally and perfectly while also saving costs.

Reducing the amount of misplaced item

As stated by the Los Angeles Times, “Professionals estimate that damages from hotel theft amounts for $100 million each year.” Obviously, lost, misplaced, or pinched assets are a huge burden on a hotel. An asset management solution aids in reducing the number of items lost. These items can be observed based on the info included on the labels and can be more effortlessly recovered if something is stolen. The Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel for instance, practices this technology in their management to track 35,000 cloth items known for getting lost – comprising sheets, dresses, and towels.

Keeping Things in Stock

An inventory tracking system makes certain that items are always available or can be without difficulty re-ordered. Keeping a track of inventory is vital for any retailer, and hotels are no exception.

For example, a hotel retails 30 bottles of water every day. If one is traded for $2.00, the hotel has the opportunity to earn about $60 per day. Given they don’t have any bottles in stock, that is a loss of $60 per day. What would that cost the hotel if it was a more costly item or if the item was unavailable for a longer period?

When considering for your inventory management solution, study the following:

• Inventory management systems must save you time, money and area.

• Don’t buy any service that necessitates you to buying supplies you don’t need.

• Choose a program that’s customizable to goods you require.

• Make certain your inventory management structure tracks expenditure.

• Have an employee adoption plan. Experienced professionals develop a methodical way of accomplishing their jobs over the years and altering habits can be problematic. Make certain you have a solution that’s easy to use.

• Avoid any program that needs a big investment at the start. It shouldn’t charge you anything more than the catalogue you are ordering to spend in an inventory management service.

• Your inventory management system must be flexible according to your needs.

Inventory management solutions delivering real-time visibility

Inventory management is considered as one of the crucial components in the success of every business. If stock levels will remain updated, customers' demands will be met promptly, accounting will be fair and working of the company will be efficient, it will automatically enable businesses to get successful as compare to their peers. In all, there are three types inventory, retailers dealing with fast moving, slow moving and non-moving inventory. Generally, these things cover the entire list of products owned by the company at any point of time. One of the primary goals of the business owners is to increase the number of fast moving items and lower the number of slow moving items.

Fast selling items Vs Slow selling items

Data from SCORE suggest that inventory accounts for between 45 to 90 percent of total business expenses. Hence, it is crucial for business owners to identify fast selling and slow selling items. Generally, slow moving products end up lying in the warehouse and gradually their value lessens. If retailers fail to sell certain items and they struggle to get the money back with poor profit margins. Secondly, if retailers keep piling slow moving items, it will not have enough space in the warehouse to store fast moving products. It will lead to numerous problems such as running out of stock and not meeting customer’s demands on time.

Power of inventory management solutions

Considering this, inventory management solutions can help enterprises manage their inventories in less time and gradually become efficient. Managing inventory is not easy as it appears. It is so important that businesses can’t afford to compromise on it. Right inventory management solutions help businesses to get real time visibility over stock levels, enabling them to easily determine which items are fast moving and which ones are slow moving.

Inventory management solutions play a much bigger role if the company operates in various sales channels. These solutions centralize inventory management, enabling merchants a single view of their inventory across sales channels. It enables them to quickly see which items are selling fast and which ones are low. Stocks can be re-ordered before they get finished.

Better inventory management solutions usually set a threshold limit and when it is reached, it alerts the retailer to re-order. In most cases, the solutions also generate an automated purchase order to help workers.

Avoiding inefficiency

As per SCORE, efficient and inefficient working with a firm is responsible for the success or failure of any business. Hence, it is crucial for firms to avoid inefficient ways of managing inventories and deploy a better inventory management system. Inventory management systems are designed in order to make firms using them efficiently and eventually successful. Since consumers are smart and they won’t for the product if not available to you. They would simply buy them from competitors. This is one of the reasons that inventory management solutions are mandatory for every type of business.

To conclude, inventory management solutions deliver real time visibility along with maximizing operations of the firm.

Inventory Management and its effects on customer satisfaction

Earlier, businesses use to depend on manual ways of tracking orders, putting invoices, counting merchandise and monitoring stock levels. This created a lot of fuss for companies since manual processes are always cumbersome. It restricted the working of employees since they have to waste immense time in managing inventory. It doesn’t allow them to focus on core activities such as resolving the customer’s query. In order to deal with such problems, there are modern day inventory management systems being used by SMEs. These inventory management systems are highly beneficial and offer the ability for firms to cope with ever-growing customer requirements.

How customers are getting smarter?

With the advancement of technology, consumers are getting smarter these days. They know the good things for them and hence, it influences their buying decisions significantly. In case, consumers don’t get what they are looking for from a particular firm, they can get plenty of options to switch. In such competitive business scenario, it becomes highly crucial for businesses to act smartly and intelligently. One of the smartest moves is to deploy an inventory management system.

Inventory management offers numerous benefits which are interlinked to each other. For instance, inventory management makes workers highly productive due to which they can focus on core areas such as resolving customer’s queries. Secondly, it enables businesses to avoid ‘out of stock’ and ‘cash flow’ situations. This write up explains the impact of inventory management on customer satisfaction. Here is a guide to how inventory management helps to increase customer satisfaction:

1. Timely fulfillment of orders: Once your inventory is management so you have a clear idea where the products are placed. Hence, when a customer puts their orders, these can be fulfilled on time without any delay. It leads to customer satisfaction and they are likely to come back time and again. For instance, a firm can put its popular items on one side while unpopular items can put into other. It enables the firm to track and fulfill orders as soon as possible.

2. Easy returns: Product returns can be challenging for a firm. Once your inventory is managed, it can help arrange instant replacement of product with manufacturers to keep customers happy. In case you manufacture, you can always maintain extra inventory levels to reduce losses and keeping customers happy.

3. Reduced prices: Customers keep looking for products with high quality and low prices. When products remain on shelves for shorter duration, there are high chances that you can decrease the cost of the product. It keeps customers happy and satisfied.

4. Updated inventory: Once your inventory is managed, it implies that your inventory is updated. It helps avoid ‘out of stock’ situations. This means that customers can effectively get their products when they want. Hence, inventory management helps to satisfy your customers and build a positive image about your company among consumers. If you haven’t realized the benefits of inventory management yet, this is the right time to realize them and keep your customers happy.

Inventory Management Techniques and Their Importance

The term inventory denotes to the things or materials used by a company for the production and sale. It also contains the objects, which are used as resources to assist production.Inventory set up one of the significant items of current resources, which licenses the smooth operation of construction and sale procedure of a firm.
Inventory management is that part of a current assets organization, which is concerned with sustaining optimum amount of inventory and relating effective control organization so as to diminish the total inventory cost.

   Different Inventory Management Techniques

Inventory administration has become an essential part of the supply chain administration. There are numerous methods that a business may use to guide its inventory:
 

Just in Time (JIT)

As the term suggests, the JIT inventory management method means that the raw item will be ordered on condition that it is wanted for shipping or business. The article may be ordered one or two days ago based on the distribution time promised by the dealer. A compulsory requirement of this method is the correct identification of the respective item before the company or reseller needs it. As, there can be numerous goods needed by provider or producer at any time, all the future necessities should be properly recognized and timely covered.

 Accurate Response Technique

The inventory management method of accurate response is an outstanding mechanism that aids businesses in managing their inventory, which can get weighed down because of improper predictions. Businesses significantly manage their catalogue on the base of future demand forecasts. It is increasingly imperative for these predictions are precise for commerce to keep itself thriving with the merciless competition. As more and more businesses have turned up with refined inventory management structures that give correct forecasts on merchandise demands, the necessity of accurate response is absolute.

Importance of Inventory management Techniques

To appreciate the different inventory management techniques it is critical to know why it is so essential.

1.       A mishandled inventory can create an unnecessary increase in the working investment. The extra funds could have been productively directed to oil the company’s development initiatives or research and expansion efforts.
2.       Effective inventory management leads to low storage budgets, which will then lead to a surge in the company’s revenues. Storage space is costly; if you are equipped in managing your inventory well and reduce the quantity of goods that you need to stock, then you will need less space, which will lead to small warehouse rental costs.
3.       It can aid you in pleasing your customers by giving them the goods they want in the swiftest way. Poor inventory management converts to lower accessibility of merchandise and higher distribution time. Therefore, if you need to gain those service approval stars, you must manage your catalogue well.
4.       Goods kept in inventory over an extensive period may become useless. This creates pointless expenditures in running a business. And, good inventory management can support you in reducing these costs greatly.

Hence, these are some of the points illustrating the importance of inventory management clearly.