How to Do Inventory at a Business
Doing inventory is a necessary component for businesses that sell goods. Keeping an accurate count of your inventory helps your business succeed in numerous ways. For instance, accurate counts help customer service: With an accurate inventory count, you can confidently tell your customers exactly how many of each item you have so that no shortage or overage occurs in that customer's order. An accurate inventory count also helps you manage your company's money: You will know exactly how much you need to order and will not waste money on extra items.
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Instructions
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Create an inventory spreadsheet that contains a row for every piece of inventory you have and a column where you can add a count for each item.
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Meet with your employees and hand out an inventory spreadsheet to each person. Inventory is especially hard with large businesses; make the task easier by assigning specific roles and tasks and defining each employee's duties and responsibilities.
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Distribute inventory tags. Inventory tags simply indicate that an item has already been counted. Instruct your employees to place an inventory tag on every item they count and not to count items that are tagged.
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Count the inventory and place hash marks next to each item on the spreadsheet to keep track of your counts. Use your spreadsheet to guide your inventory counting. If you sell pens and pencils, for example, count how many boxes of pens you have and list that number next to the row labeled "pens"; do the same for pencils and any other item on the list.
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Collect the inventory spreadsheets after the counting is complete. Compile one inventory spreadsheet that contains the results from the individual sheets.
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