How to Implement a Real-Time Inventory Control of Complex Products: Three Practical Tips
In our recent article we’ve introduced the 1C:Drive ERP solution for medium enterprises. Today, we will talk about features that can be successfully used for solving common pain points of any business dealing with warehouse and inventory management.
Many production companies, distributors and wholesalers dealing with complex products struggle when it comes to inventory control. Managing multiple products with different parameters, different order sizes, and goods history tracking requires a lot of resources. In this article, we will talk about several ways of boosting inventory control efficiency using 1C:Drive all-in-one solution that grows with your business.
Tip #1: Use variant management
In many industries, the end products that can be purchased by the customer can have multiple parameters. For example, in textile, clothes can have sizes, colors, etc. The traditional approach to product accounting suggests that each “size+color” combination is a product. This is a highly inefficient approach, as it significantly increases the number of product cards you need to store and manage.
Instead, 1C:Drive solution offers a product variants feature using an innovative approach that allows the creation of one product with multiple variants. Speaking about our example with clothes, the T-shirt will be a product, and a red T-shirt of an XL size will be the product variant.
If the T-shirt has six sizes and five colors available, the traditional business automation software will come up with a list of 30 products (6 sizes X 5 colors). In 1C:Drive, you will have only one product, which is a 30 times more efficient way of inventory management. Even more, if in the future there will be T-shirts with more parameters or new products, 1C:Drive allows adding new tracking patterns right in the interface without the need to write a single line of code.
Also, all variants can be used directly in Purchase and Sales documents. This saves a lot of time that is usually spent on manual dealing with multiple stock cards.
Tip #2: Implement the tracking of the serial numbers
Some companies (production, sales, service, etc.) deal with expensive products like laptops. In this case, usually, the company wants to track the product at every step of its lifecycle from production, entering the stock, purchase, and service. This is best done via unique serial numbers.
Vendors and service companies also need to implement a service history tracking to be able to access the information about the products’ warranty service, diagnostics, and its dates. To solve these tasks, such companies need to implement proper serial numbers and replacement parts accounting and management.
1C:Drive is such a solution tailored to manufacturers, resellers, and service companies’ needs and supports the detailed product workflow based on serial numbers.
Tip 3: Implement batch management
Sometimes, it is much easier to deal with products combined into batches. A batch is a number of goods that the business treats as a homogeneous unit with unique specifications. A batch can represent the following:
- Quantity of goods produced in a single manufacturing run.
- A collection of product items received for consignment sale.
- A collection of product items supplied to a subcontractor for processing.
You can use batches to track products by expiration date or other attributes relevant to your business process.
Using batches requires that you specify a product batch in sales or purchase documents. Then you can view stock, sales, or purchase reports by batches.
Using batches also reduces the volume of information to analyze and account, which leads to higher efficiency and eliminates manual labor.
Final thoughts
In conclusion, let’s list the main pros of using 1C:Drive for the implementation of the real-time inventory control of complex products:
- High level of adaptability — the system grows with your business, once your inventory volume increases, 1C:Drive will keep the same level of efficiency with no additional costs.
- Variant management feature allows the optimization of complex products accounting. Create one product with multiple parameters instead of hundreds and thousands of stock cards for each parameter combination.
- Track your products by serial number. Easily manage your products and each stage of their life cycle.
- Combine similar goods in batches for easier management. Reduce the volume of data to analyze and account.
