How to Simplify Purchasing throughout the Inventory Process

How can retailers toss their inventory spreadsheets aside and finally streamline purchasing?

It’s as simple as implementing automated and effective purchase order (PO) management throughout the inventory process.

Let’s start with the basics. Like what’s a purchase order and why is it so important? A PO is a sales contract between the buyer and seller specifying the exact merchandise received from a vendor.

Within that, there are details related to the payment terms, delivery dates, item specifications, quantities, shipping terms and other relevant terms and conditions.

When you’re managing a retail business, purchasing and online inventory management go hand in hand.

Why PO Management is the Answer to Budgeting & Forecasting

Every time you purchase stock items from a vendor, a purchase order is the document of record that allows you to keep track of purchase requests, outstanding orders and to manage your accounts payable and accounts receivable. This process is crucial to the financial health of the business.

Inventory control and planning with PO’s is the key to maintaining available-to-sell product levels and replenishing orders in the fastest time possible. To prevent any errors from occurring, it is best to manage both your inventory levels and purchase orders in the same solution.

When these are managed separately, there is more room for discrepancies in inventory numbers, lack of visibility and overall inefficiencies.

Multichannel selling adds another level of complexity, with orders coming in from multiple sales channels. Managing available inventory across multiple sales channels can be prone to errors in the purchasing process, but with the right order and inventory management (OMS) software, this can all be avoided.

How Can an Order Management System Help?

With an order management system, you can easily see all of your purchase orders on all of your sales channels. But that’s not all.

You have the ability to create your own dashboards, which lets you keep an eye on product level alerts, from warnings to alert low level product inventory to visibility into your top selling products. You can also see those that historically sell well at peak seasons or with specific promotions.

With easy access to keep track of product returns and
where your most popular sales are coming from across all sales channels, the benefits keep coming.

Throw away the inventory spreadsheets and check out how an OMS can streamline the purchasing process.

• Easily See When To Re-Order Products:

-Alerts will be sent when reorder points [thresholds you set] are reached

-Create & send a PO to the correct supplier(s) with a few clicks

-Store supplier contact information & order history for reconciliation & forecasting

• Quickly Update Inventory:

-Reconcile & update order levels & your sales channel inventory levels automatically

-Sync back to the channels on which you sell the items

• Better Manage Back Orders:

-Any back orders for received items would automatically be updated and queued up for processing.

• Know Your Costs:

-Automatically include the correct ‘buying level’ pricing on each PO, for special terms, discount levels, etc.

-Gain an accurate understanding of how much the product is actually costing you

• Avoid Stock Outs:

-One solution=complete visibility over your operations

-Real-time solutions help to avoid stock outs and improve the customer experience

Check out the free eBook below on Multichannel Order Management for eCommerce to learn about back office strategies, optimizing the order process and more.