Checking stock and inventory levels is a prerequisite in many businesses where assets are hugely important. This is especially so in warehouses and in retail stores, where the stock these types of business carry can mean the difference between them succeeding or failing.
Managing the stock in a warehouse or a retail store is usually done when the business has ceased trading for the day. A member of the team will check the stock items against a database to make sure all stock is accounted for, so new stock can be ordered. The information gained from this can lead the business to choose which stock is selling quickly, and so is making the company money, and which stock is performing poorly and hence is not providing sufficient through-put levels.
If a company does not know what is in stock, it can result in a compete breakdown of business operations and be a cause for embarrassment for the company when they tell clients they have a certain product in stock but they were actually out of stock a number of days ago.
Doing stock takes couldn’t happen without barcode technology. Because all stock items have a barcode label, the stock taker can scan each item in turn, so the stock figures are updated on the central database. This makes stock taking easier, quicker and much more efficient than the manual methods once used.