Inventory Orders
Processing inventory orders and tying them to other backend operations are an important piece of your business workflows. In an ideal situation, you are placing purchase orders with the right quantities at the right time to fill orders and meet demand, with a careful touch to avoid over ordering. Like a running water faucet whose temperature frequently requires adjustments to avoid becoming too hot or too cold, inventory should be managed to regulate quantities and costs as demand changes.
While some companies work on spreadsheets and others function with disjointed software for different departmental functions, neither is an ideal situation. Most companies that make or sell products need order management, manufacturing, fulfillment, sales, and finance workflow capabilities. Some of the best-known order management systems handle sales orders and fulfillment only. When sales orders are tied to purchase orders, you get a system synchronized to replace goods sold. To facilitate growth, you need the activities of all your departments to come together in a single database while accommodating all the information processing each department requires.
Inventory Orders – Striking a Balance
Ordering raw materials or ingredients to manufacture more products entail much more than sending out an order.
Receiving materials you need before you face shortages and in the right quantities to make what you need and not too much more demands insights into order history, forecasting, lead time, minimum order quantities.
Purchase orders should never be guesswork. When you can accurately determine the minimum order quantity for an item, you can set a reorder point to automate reordering of that item at just the right time.
SOS Inventory will track order quantities, costs, and all workflows from the time of receipt through work in progress stages until delivery to the customer keeping your purchase order timing on point. And that’s just one reason SOS Inventory is a highly effective inventory management tool.
But wait! Not every business works with reorder points. There are some businesses that order the same quantity every time they order. Few are in this position, because the approach only works when demand is consistent all year long.
Material or parts for customized products may not be ordered until the customer accepts the terms. Think about furniture or vehicles and their wide range of finishes and options. SOS Inventory can accommodate just-in-time inventory models, too.
If your products come with expiration dates, you can’t afford to keep product around for long or you risk having to discard them. Other, non-perishable items may be bought it bulk to take advantage of volume pricing but do come with warehouse storage costs while they sit on your shelves.
Perhaps you don’t touch any product at all. Even drop shipping can be integrated with other departmental activities to provide greater end to end control of the entire process.
SOS Inventory can facilitate inventory orders for any business model, providing scalability for growth, advanced tracking capabilities, automated tasks, advanced reporting, integration across departments, including QuickBooks Online, ecommerce and shipping platforms.
