Inventory reports are records of the inventory your business has. Find out what type of inventory report you need, with NuORDER.
Inventory reports are a record of what products a business currently has available. Let NuORDER help you understand which type of inventory reports you should use.
Inventory reports are one of the most crucial parts of a wholesaler’s business and its financial success.
Don’t believe it? Poorly made inventory reports cost retailers 1.75 trillion dollars annually. Out-of-stocks alone cost retailers $1 trillion in sales.
To say understanding supply and demand via accurate inventory reports is essential is an understatement.
To help wholesalers avoid all-too-common problems like stock-outs, overselling, overstocking, and holding costs, this article will cover:
- What an inventory report is
- Inventory and sales report types for brands
- Inventory reporting best practices
What is an inventory report?
An inventory report is an overview of the products your brand has on hand at any given time and is usually coded to make tracking easier.
When inventory reports are up-to-date with real-time and highly detailed information, it helps your brand understand what you have in stock.
Armed with the correct information within your inventory reports ensures you won’t over or under-provide inventory to your customers, which helps you cut costs and save time.
Inventory reports also help you:
- Understand when to re-order specific items so there are no delays
- Track inventory for order fulfillment across various locations
- Sort sales data by numbers, reps, and more
- Categorize your inventory
- Manage information from all suppliers
- Identify any recalled products
- Forecast future sales and product needs
- View the location of your products
- And more!
What are the various types of inventory reports?
Now that we’ve discussed what an inventory report is and how it helps you, let’s talk about the inventory reports that are relevant to wholesale brands and retailers.
1. Inventory on hand
Your inventory on hand report is arguably one of the most critical inventory reports when it comes to saving time and money. This inventory report shows you how many product units you have and the current stock value.
When you have this information, you know how much capital you have in your inventory, which helps with forecasting.
2. Low stock
You never want to run into a situation where you are out of a product that’s in high demand. It’s bad for your reputation as a brand and hurts your sales opportunities.
Keeping a fine-tuned eye on your low-stock inventory reports will tell you which items are running low. When you know when you’re running low, you can replenish your stock before you run into any problems.
3. Product performance report
A product performance report tells you how quickly your products are selling and which ones are the most popular.
An excellent product performance inventory report will segment data into how much you’ve sold over various times and the products you’ve sold during a specific time period.
This data shows what products you need more and less of during specific sales seasons.
4. Sales summary
Since your inventory is directly related to your brand’s sales, you need a way to track the goods you’ve sold, the costs of items, gross profit, margins, taxes, and more.
A sales report summary will help you learn how much you make month-over-month, season-over-season, and year-over-year. Additionally, they can help you make better business decisions regarding your inventory.
A sales summary report gives you an essential overview of your overall sales activity. It’s also smart to create sales inventory reports that dive deeper into different categories, including sales per product, sales per customer, sales per salesperson, and more.
5. Inventory Movement Reports
An inventory movement report is designed to help provide you with information on how fast your products move along the entire supply chain. These types of inventory reports help you better understand the inflows, and outflows of your products and their quantities. This inventory report helps you identify which of your products move the fastest through the chain and thus can be the most profitable, or have the highest potential for profit. The faster the product moves, the faster you can get it to customers.
6. Turnover Inventory Report
A turnover inventory report is great to learn how quickly your company is able to receive money from clients' invoices as well as how fast your company turns over its inventories. Examining these turnover rates can help determine if certain products are overstocked or understocked and be corrected. These reports can also be made more granular and show turnover by-products, warehouses, and even specific stores.
What are the inventory reporting best practices?
If it’s your first time looking into inventory reports, or if you want to improve your processes, then it’s best to start out on the right foot. Here are the inventory reporting best practices that will help your brand get the most out of inventory reports
Invest in technology to help you manage your inventory reports
Long gone are the days of relying on a paper trail to track your inventory and orders. With today’s technology, it’s easy to eliminate human error with the power of automated order and inventory reporting.
For wholesale brands, the most effective way to manage inventory reports is with the help of a B2B eCommerce platform like NuORDER.
While NuORDER offers awesome virtual showrooms, digital trade shows, and online ordering, it also offers a powerful reporting feature. With NuORDER, it’s easy to track your inventory, monitor your sales, and segment your data by best-sellers, sales rep, style, store, zip code, season, and state.
Track the right metrics
To get the most out of your inventory reporting, you want to track the right metrics. What you end up tracking will depend on your brand and your needs, but here are some of the top metrics to consider:
- Inventory turnover rate. This measures the number of times an item is replaced over a given period of time. This metric is calculated by the cost of goods sold divided by the average inventory and shows you how much inventory you have in comparison to how much is sold.
- Stock to sales ratio. This measures the inventory amount you have versus the number of sales.
- Item fill rate. This metric shows the percentage of products from a buyer’s order you could ship.
- Backorder rate. The backorder rate measures the number of orders a brand can’t fulfill when a buyer places an order. It provides insight into product demand.
- Accuracy of forecast demand. This metric shows you the percentage of how close the on-hand stock is to the forecast.
- Lead time demand. Lead time demand tracks the time when an order is placed to when it arrives to a buyer and helps with forecasting.
- Annual demand. This metric tracks how much of a particular product is needed every year.
- ROI. Return on investment and it’s the percentage of profit over a period of time.
- Product Sales. This shows your sales revenue, or the income from buyer purchases, minus any cancellations.
For more helpful metrics to track, take a look at the inventory reports in NuORDER.
Track your metrics in real-time
While there are several inventory report management platforms on the market, not all of them are created equal.
When you’re looking for an inventory reporting solution, look for a solution like NuORDER that can provide real-time inventory reporting for both the buyer and the wholesaler.
When your stats are updated in real-time, you can rest assured that you won’t make inventory and sales mistakes.
Improving your inventory reporting strategy with NuORDER
Inventory reporting is critical to running a successful wholesale brand, and tracking the right metrics makes it possible to understand customer demand and provide the right supply without losing money.
NuORDER is unique in that it’s built specifically for wholesalers and retailers and offers inventory reports data to both parties. For more information about NuORDER, schedule a demo today.
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NuORDER Team
NuORDER is dedicated to providing thoughtful, informative B2B eCommerce industry insights. Brands use NuORDER's platform to deliver a seamless, more collaborative wholesale process, where buyers can browse products, plan assortments and make smarter buys in real-time.
