Inventory made easy! The tool you need to know about now for your boutique shop
Created by: Kate Jackson, Ryan Kerekes, Donald Lukinuk
Starting up a business can make it difficult to stay on top of everything happening within the company. One issue is that a business could run into is their inventory management. This tool was made to help boutique clothing businesses that are just starting out have the ability to simplify the way they manage their stock, without the hefty price tag of software. Small boutiques typically keep fairly low stock to start out with, so a jump in sales could quickly diminish stock and possibly cost you sales. This tool will help take care of the dirty work and streamline the analytics. Having insight to your retail analytics can also help you to win more sales and customers for your business in the long run.
This tool tracks all inputted inventory changes in a spreadsheet, then automatically generates a log of the changes with Zapier, which puts it into a log sheet in the same Google Sheets document. This tool will then allow for analysis of the data in either charts or graphs using Google Data Studio, which can be easily linked to your Google sheets data. Most boutique businesses that are just starting out probably don’t need to spend money on an expensive inventory management system, but they might want something less old-fashioned then doing it by hand. This tool provides a middle ground that allows your company to keep record of stock while avoiding the hefty price tag. This tool can also accommodate multiple employees to edit the inventory sheet at the same time. So, if several transactions happen, and the boutique wishes to track everything in real time, the tool will allow for multiple employees to change different numbers on the spreadsheet. This is thanks to Google Sheets’ share option that is safe and secure, and can be limited to only authorized users.
The best part of this tool is that everything can be managed through a single table. Nobody wants to worry or be responsible for keeping logs over time, but the data from those logs is valuable because of its ability to show trends. The trends can also be used to recognize changes and error identification in inventory and keep stock levels at a desired quantity. The tool takes away the stress of having to sort through multiple tables (or manually post transaction logs in tables) and provides all the information in one convenient place. Who wouldn’t want to easily be able to make smart decisions that contribute towards higher profits and more satisfied customers?
So, are you ready to learn about how it works?
Google Sheets is used in the example below to track the number of transactions and average inventory levels for a certain time period within a business. When there is a change in the level of inventory, the manager or employee can edit the sheet to show that inventory change. This will be kept in a log file seen later in this tool implementation. The date of change is noted and tagged beside the inventory item that was modified (as seen in column C, “Date Changed” in the screenshot below). This is done by creating a script on Google Sheets, which was found on the website, Stack Exchange. This script needed very little editing to work with our solution, and can be modified to add timestamps along with the date modified to create more specific trends, as described later in this post. (See end of post for code)
A tool called Zapier then takes the changes and inputs a new row at the end of the ‘Logs’ sheet with the date it was created on (this can be modified to add the timestamp as stated above). This process of creation was easy due to the interface provided by Zapier. For this solution, the same Google account that created the Google Sheets was used to connect to Zapier, to eliminate any authorization issues with Google Sheets. Using the free plan, Zapier will update your log files every 15 minutes, but on a paid plan ($50+ USD), the user is able to update them every 5 minutes to keep more accurate and up to date log files.
The Log sheet is then linked to Google Data Studio. This is a tool (offered free by Google currently in beta) that transforms your data into dashboards and reports that are easy to read (for more information on the tools in this article, a description is provided below). From here the manager can simply set up charts for analysis that automatically update after each new item entry on the sheet is created. This gives the manager endless opportunities and capabilities to be able to set up specific spreadsheets to analyze different data. This could include frequency of sales, buying patterns during different times of the year, orders, returns, turnover of inventory, and much more.
One thing to note with Google Data Studio is that it is still in beta. In the making of this tool, there were a few quirks that made it frustrating to work with. One being the inability to choose the second sheet from Google Sheets to gather log data. This was fixed by making the logs sheet come first in the Google Sheets application.
Final thoughts:
Retailers who want to grow and be profitable in the future will benefit from paying attention to their data and incorporating that into their business decisions. With tools available that are able to take the work out of logging and developing analytics, there are no excuses to start incorporating them today and create a worthwhile and easy method of managing inventory.
Overview and description of each tool included in this post:
- Google Sheets: a web-based platform that enables users to create and update spreadsheets, it is also easily accessible and shareable among people in a secure manor.
- Zapier: an online tool that acts as a connector between two different applications and automates tasks to save time.
- Google Data Studio: it is still in its beta version, but this tool takes your data and turns it into visualizations in the form of reports that are customizable and easily shareable.
Have other ideas about how this tool could benefit your business? Let us know in the comments!
