Matthew Luminoso English 352-010 March 8, 2004 Process: How To Keep An Inventory For A Small Business Summary: This process is for someone who wants to learn a basic way to keep inventory. It will propose two ways to keep track of your goods and/or supplies. It is an simple way for beginners to get into a good routine of inventory. Pre-requisites: Your business must keep track of sales (customer purchases) with the use of receipts in order for this system to work. Your receipts must have the total number of each product sold. Step One: Initial Count This step is prior to opening of the business. Have a piece of paper ready to write down your amounts of each of the products. Count how much you have of each product and record it. Keep the paper handy for later use. Step Two: Creating a system to track your daily inventory Here are two methods to keep your inventory in check. (Note: If this is your first day of business, then use the numbers you created in Step One for the Beginning of Day Total. All other Beginning of Day Total will be the prior day’s End of Day Total.) Make sure you include the date on each inventory form created. By doing this you will not confuse your days and be able to keep track of your paper work easier. Method 1: End of Day Counting This method will have you taking inventory after business hours. 1. Create a table(See Table Below) i. Make sure your table includes all of your items you are going to sell. By doing this you can make copies of the table so you can have it ready for when you take inventory the next day. Inventory for mm/dd/yyyy Product List Product1 Product 2 Beginning of Day Total 20 33 End of Day Total 15 11
2. Now that your table is completed, go through your sales receipts of the day and count the items you sold. So your inventory form is not messy, take another piece of paper and use that as a tally sheet. Quick tip: If you want this process to move a little quicker, then involve as many other employees as you feel necessary in the tallying of the products.
3. After all of the products on the receipts have been counted, put those values in the appropriate End of Day Total field on the table you created. After you have filled all of the End of Day Total fields then go back to the prior day’s End of Day Total and use that as the present day’s Beginning of Day Total.
Method 2: Keeping Track throughout the business day This method will have you keep track of your inventory throughout the day and it will help you figure out your how much business you make on an hourly basis. 1. Create a table This table keeps track of what your business sells on an hourly basis Product List Product 1 Product 2 Beginning of Day Hour 1 Hour 2 Hour 3 Hour 4 Hour 5 Hour 6 Hour 7 E.O.F.T
(E.O.F.T = End Of Day Total) Note: Feel Free to adjust how many times you want to take inventory by changing the number of hours in your table. For example, if you wanted to only check your inventory every two hours in an 8 hour period, then you would only have to put 4 fields in the table. (See below for Example) Product List Product 1 Product 2 2. The value of the Beginning of Day Total is taken from the last time you took inventory on the prior day. (Example from above table: the value of Hour 7&8 would be entered as the value for the Beginning of Day Total for the next day.) 3. To keep track of the hourly totals: a. designate an employee to look over the receipts during that time period and tally all of the items sold. b. Enter the value into the appropriate hour field. File the receipts of that period in a folder so they do not get re-counted the next time you take inventory. c. Do this procedure for each hour or period of time you designate. 4. At the end of the day (Do this step for each item on your list): a. Add up all the hourly or period totals per item. b. Take that total of each itemsand subtract it from the Beginning of Day Total of that same item. c. This will give you the final total of how many items you have left at the end of each day. Beginning of Day Total Hour 1&2 Hour 3&4 Hour 5&6 Hour 7 & 8 End of Day Total
Step Three: Repeat step two every day. Remember continue to use the method you initially chose