The business of most companies is impossible without keeping a certain level of inventory. Excess items in stock, if there is no economic justification for it, is a loss that is reflected, both through the cost of storage and through the amount of captured working capital. Excel has a very simple way to determine the quantity of items that are most in stock, as well as any additional information regarding those items.
Most traders order intuitively, which is perfectly fine when dealing with small quantities of goods. When sales rises, in order to be efficiently ordered, insight in inventory costs is needed. These costs are divided into three groups: costs of acquisition, holding and lack of inventory (missed income due to lack of inventory). An economically justified order quantity is the one that causes the lowest inventory costs.
Sales return is an event when good are returned from the buyer to the supplier for one of the following reasons: wrong orders, more goods delivered than the requested, damaged product, damaged packaging, expiration of the term … By analysing the cause of the reimbursement we may , for a longer period of time, to decide what needs to be done to reduce their number to a minimum.
Inventory is necessary but always dull (whatever kind of inventory you do). Since some time ago and I was a member of the Inventory Commission, this experience has served as an inspiration to write an article about a good way of using collaboration tools in Excel (Shared tables) to facilitate inventory process. This is also a good way to use Windows tablets that your company have bought. Most of the time they are only used for show off, and now they could have a real purpose.