Will Using Excel Slow Down Your Inventory Management?

Managing a warehouse is vital to help small businesses keep up their success by managing time better, increasing productivity, and decreasing costs.

An efficient inventory management software solution is crucial for smooth warehouse operations.

Excel is a staple across industries. Not only is it readily accessible, but it is also free to use and offers all of the basic functionality you could need. Excel is a great starting point when you’re new to inventory management, but over time spreadsheets may slow your business down.

Although companies may prefer Excel as most employees may be familiar with it, investing in automated inventory management software may be beneficial in the long run. While Excel is suited for various purposes in a company, it does not offer the best performance for inventory management.

Why Should You Opt for Automated Inventory Management Software?

Excel has been around for decades. Hence, employees, as well as business owners, are more likely to gravitate towards it. But, in reality, Excel could be slowing down your business and not be the most efficient option for inventory management.

Visualisation is Difficult

Excel may work as a primary inventory tool; it gets the job done when you want to know your current stock of a product. But for efficient warehouse management, knowing the number of items in your inventory isn’t enough; you need to know how much space an item takes up, what each item looks like, whether it is stackable, and more.

Excel will not be able to provide you with a visual representation of the item by itself. To check for finer details, you will need an employee to drop everything and check the product in person. Hence, valuable time and energy would be wasted.

No Real-time Results

Excel is a manual inventory system. You’ll require employees to monitor the spreadsheet to ensure that every transaction is accounted for. Hence, there are no automated real-time results. The resources spent in manually monitoring inventory spreadsheets could be used in other areas to increase productivity.

Not Collaborative

In the workplace, collaboration is key. Unfortunately, with Excel, collaboration is not possible. If you have more than one person managing the inventory and transactions, you would want them to collaborate in real-time. Without the opportunity to collaborate with co-workers, there is an increased chance of errors.

Omits Helpful Insights

When you opt for an automated inventory management system, you get more than just the raw data that Excel provides. While you may feel that you do not need much more than the raw data to manage inventory, other insights such as purchase history, trends across different months and more, can help you increase efficiency.

With more relevant data about your inventory, you can plan your business operations better.

Managing an inventory is no easy task, and Excel by itself may not be the best choice for tracking it. When you want to be on top of things, it is crucial to get your inventory right. With automated inventory management software, you get helpful insights, accurate visualization, opportunities to collaborate with co-workers, and real-time updates.