Here's How an App-based Inventory System With Scanner Can Make Stock-take a Cinch

What is Inventory Management?

Inventory management refers to the process of monitoring and replenishing stock levels of an inventory. It helps organizations keep track of every aspect of their stocks, from stock utilization, depreciation, depletion, reordering, vendor management, demand forecasting and demand planning, over-portioning, stock wastage, to stock loss.

Inventory management involves time and effort, but no business can bypass it. Thankfully, modern technology has been able to significantly speed up stock-take and ensure that the counting of stocks and tracking of inventory can be done with a high degree of accuracy.

Inventory management, in this regard, is closely related to supply chain management since they both involve the acquisition, processing, storage, shipment, and sale of raw materials as well as finished goods. Businesses can now track incoming and outgoing stocks to a high degree of precision with the help of sophisticated software.

The main goal of inventory management is to prevent businesses from failing to deliver orders because they've run out of stock, and from having excess (and unusable) inventory that consumes precious storage space and inflates costs. Firms should always aspire to attain a high degree of inventory control.

Types of Inventory Management Systems

There are three broad systems of inventory management- manual, periodic, and perpetual systems.

Before the introduction of technology, managing inventory levels and nearly all accounting tasks were done by hand. Items used to be manually tallied -- a process that was slow, tedious, and error-prone. While many firms have now moved toward automation, some small enterprises continue to manage inventory on sheets or paper or on spreadsheets because they carry fewer stocks and inventorying is basic.

The periodic inventory system acts as a link between the manual and perpetual systems. When employing a periodic system, you perform physical counts of products only occasionally. Depending on the type of industry you operate in, physical inventory counts can be done every month, every week, or every year. This technique works effectively for companies with low stock levels that keep a small quantity of saleable goods on hand.

However, the fact that a periodic inventory system doesn't monitor inventory levels transaction-by-transaction or item-by-item, presents a challenge for business owners. It also becomes difficult to compute your cost of goods sold (COGS) accurately with a periodic inventory system.

The perpetual inventory management system, on the other hand, is the most effective way to monitor your inventory. A perpetual system continuously updates the expenses related to each product at every stage of the product's life cycle, tracking stock levels and cost on a transaction-by-transaction basis. A perpetual system makes use of digital technology to accurately update transactions and track stocks in real time. With the help of a perpetual system, you'd be able to quickly identify slow-moving goods, pinpoint the exact location of goods, and maintain optimum levels of reordering to ensure that you are neither overstocked nor understocked.

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Components of an App-based Inventory Management System- Software

The data obtained by barcode scanning is decrypted and sent to the inventory software operating on computers and mobile devices. The product data is then displayed in the form of easy-to-understand text.

• Apps, in contrast to websites, don't always require a browser or an internet connection to work. They provide features comparable to those found on desktops and laptops and can be easily downloaded and saved on mobile devices. Apps also provide a better user experience than web pages since they load quickly. Additionally, they make better use of the hardware and software capabilities of mobile devices.
• Apps also have the ability to function offline, saving you the hassle of dealing with a sluggish mobile data connection. As a result, you can access basic content downloaded on a mobile device without needing to use the internet.
• Apps for inventory control and barcode scanning are essentially cloud based solutions. With minimum hardware, inventory can be tracked remotely and in real time. These inventory management apps often allow you to take stock counts without a barcode scanner. Simply open the app on your phone, point the phone's camera at a barcode or QR code, and scan it. The data from the barcode appears on your mobile screen. The sophisticated software of today gives you access to every product detail.
• These programs offers quick, precise, and convenient results and are a huge improvement from manual or spreadsheet-based methods of stock-taking.
  

Components of an App-based Inventory Management System- Hardware

Modern inventory systems enlist several physical or hardware components to support inventory software. In the case of app-based systems, the most important piece of hardware is the smartphone or tablet, desktop or laptop. Other pieces of hardware associated with app-based inventory management are barcodes, barcode scanners, printers, and Bluetooth / Wifi / mobile broadband devices, and wires.

• Vertical bars of black and white, consisting of 8 to 12 characters (alphanumeric or numeric) make up the barcodes. A two-dimensional, 2D, or matrix barcode, on the other hand, is patterned elaborately and is called a QR code. In comparison to one-dimensional or 1D barcodes, a QR code has more characters and holds a lot more product information.
• A printer is used to manufacture barcode labels. These barcode labels are then attached to products.
• The hardware components of barcode scanners include illuminators, sensors, and decoders.
• Scanners use LED light produced by their illumination system to read barcodes. The decoder receives an analog signal from the sensor once it has detected the light reflected by the barcode. The decoder makes sense of the analog signal and displays the information as text.
• Hardware for inventory management can include cables, USB ports, and Wifi / Bluetooth / mobile broadband devices as well. Scanners may be wirelessly connected to a mobile device or computer terminal via Bluetooth, Wifi, or mobile broadband technologies.
  

Types of Barcode Scanners

There are five different categories of barcode scanners. They are-

1. Pen wand- This is a rudimentary, but extremely durable barcode scanner. A pen wand has no moving parts. To read data, it needs to be held close to the barcode and at a specific angle to it. The speed at which the scanner should move over the barcode is also specified.

2. Slot scanner- A slot scanner is stationary. It has a slot through which the product to be scanned has to be manually pulled through. This device is commonly used for scanning barcodes printed on cards.

3. Charge couple device (CCD) scanner- This is frequently utilized in retail businesses. It has a longer range compared to pen wands and comes with a gun-like interface. To accurately record data, many readings must be obtained while holding the device near a barcode. These devices have the drawback of only being able to read barcodes that have a width corresponding to the size of the face of the barcode scanner.

4. Image scanner- This device, also known as a camera reader, employs a tiny camera to capture a picture of the barcode. It comes with digital imaging processors. This sort of Barcode Scanner has the benefit of being able to read barcodes nine feet away.

5. Laser scanner- Similar to image scanners, laser scanners can read product barcodes without having to be in close proximity to them. The device can be stationary or handheld. These barcode scanners make use of lenses as well as mirrors, which allows them to read barcodes up to 24 inches away. They can also read barcodes in any direction and can undertake 500 scans per second.

How to Use an App-based Inventory System?

To really profit from an app-based inventory system, integrate it with your point of sale (POS), supply chain management, order management, and business intelligence systems. When inventory software is integrated with a POS system, for example, business owners know precisely when inventories run out and reorder points are reached. When stock levels hit a preset threshold, smart solutions can automatically trigger purchase orders.

Barcode Inventory Scanners interpret barcodes to identify items and record their price and quantity in an inventory system. Through barcode scanning, stock quantities are updated as new stocks are acquired and old stocks are sold, both in the physical and digital store.

Apps give business owners and operators immediate updates on the amount of inventory on hand, in the storehouse, the amount that has been sold, spoiled, or purchased. Additionally, apps provide data on the overall number of products that need to be packed, as well as the number of packages that need to be shipped and delivered, and the number of items that need to be billed.

Even when operators are away from a business site, they can review the day's transactions and examine full stock reports organized neatly into charts and graphs, any time they want. They are notified via in-app alerts and push notifications when inventories run out or discrepancies arise in inventory counts.

Apps help businesses complete inventory management tasks quickly, helping them save time -- like, for instance, automatically alerting suppliers about new orders. At the end of the day, a restaurant and bar inventory system based on apps makes the job of business owners and employees extremely easy and helps keep the business in the customers' good books.

Benefits of an App-based Inventory System

1. Real time data- Automated asset management and inventory software can be accessed on mobiles in the form of apps, which makes real-time information readily available.

2. Data accuracy- By scanning barcodes and generating its own reports, an app-based inventory system reduces the likelihood of human error and improves inventory accuracy.

3. Increased productivity- Since everyone has a mobile phone today, employees can use the inventory app to process and review inventory data easily and quickly, from any location and in real time. This increases worker productivity.

4. Eliminating manual method- One of the most conventional ways of keeping track of inventory is the manual method, which uses pen and paper. However, it is becoming more and more difficult to maintain inventory counts today using this method as stocks tend to shift quickly from one location to another. Moreover, manual methods can compromise the accuracy of data. Discrepancies between the recorded and actual stock count may cause delays in production, and may disappoint customers. App-based inventory management, however, is largely immune from this problem.