You are always looking for ways to increase your bottom line. Sourcing better prices, looking for alternative vendors. While these are an important part of increasing revenues, there is one other way to increase your profits. 

And that is inventory management. 

Unsold or obsolete parts can easily get out of control and affect your bottom line. By making sure your inventory is effectively managed, you can make better decisions to help minimize lost revenue. 

You will also feel confident that your reports are showing accurate stock levels and historical trends so that you can see what isn’t selling well. This means you can better optimize capital allocation and find alternative ways to offload parts before their value is completely lost.

Inventory Management Makes Better Use Of Your Employees

Proper inventory management means that your team will spend less time looking for missing parts and more time focusing on income-generating tasks. It will also help make tedious jobs like counting stock and data entry more efficient as there won’t be as many adjustments to make come the annual inventory.

Inventory Management Improves Customer Loyalty

Maintaining proper inventory records increases customer satisfaction. From a parts perspective, if your inventory records are properly maintained, you will be able to answer parts inquiries and fill customer orders faster. If a customer must wait longer for a response or finds out that a part, they were told was in stock isn’t, it can have a negative effect on their opinion of the company.

If you can quickly determine whether the auto part is in stock and, if necessary, how long it will take to obtain, your customer will feel more confident in your business.

Tips For Managing Your Inventory

If you want to improve your inventory management for lower costs, make better use of your employee’s time and improve customer loyalty, consider these 5 steps 

1. Do a physical inventory to ensure that your DMS accurately reflects what is on your shelves. 
2. Organize your parts and be sure to properly label each bin and shelf so that parts are easy to locate, pull and return if necessary. 
3. Come up with policies and procedures for managing your Parts Department – this may include limiting the number and type of personnel who have access to the inventory, ensuring parts are returned to their proper place, etc. 
4. Inventory parts with recurring discrepancies on a more regular basis to ensure accuracy is maintained throughout the year
5. Investigate discrepancies immediately. If a part that is supposed to be in stock is not, take the time to find out why as it will help identify and resolve any inventory management issues. 

By following these steps, you can help your Parts Department increase efficiencies and improve your bottom line

If you would like to speak to one of our auto parts inventory experts, or receive a quote, contact us today!