Inventory management plays a crucial role in the overall success of various businesses, including marine businesses like marinas and boatyards. The goal of inventory management is to keep track and maintain records of all the inventory and its existing condition, in order to ensure resource safety and efficiency.
In current times, marine businesses make use of leading marine inventory management software to undertake an annual inventory check at the end of their fiscal year. Doing so, enables them to move current year sales and purchase data to the previous year and reset the year-to-date sold, purchased, and received totals. This is done for two main reasons –
1. To verify that the on-hand count of each item as per the digital records matches the actual inventory stock count, and
2. To calculate the monetary investment and take the necessary steps in time.
DockMaster’s inventory management solution provides all the necessary tools for efficient inventory tracking, including purchasing, integration to point of sale and integration with the service management (work order) features. To learn about its features and how it can benefit your business, watch this video.
Annual Inventory Management Checklist:
While performing an annual inventory check, the inventory manager must keep the following things in mind –
1. Print count sheets and create inventory lists via the report generator
2. Reset year-end totals
3. Halt sales if possible (otherwise need to track sales prior to items counted)
4. Halt purchasing and receipts
5. Physically count inventory quantities
6. Begin sales if halted (once each shelf is counted)
7. Enter the physical inventory count
8. Print the physical inventory extension report
9. Print the physical inventory variances report
10. Move physical counts to quantity on hand
11. Print perpetual inventory extension report
12. Begin purchasing and receiving
13. Adjust general ledger inventory accounting.
In conclusion, the benefits of periodic inventory management procedures include optimizing costs, avoiding the occurrence of overstocking and stock-outs, streamlining operations and boosting efficiency, improving business planning and thereby maximizing profits.
If you use an advanced marine software system like DockMaster, there are ways you can stay sharp all year round and not let inventory tasks slip on you. DockMaster offers periodic inventory training classes, both on basic parts and major unit inventory. Consult our training schedule for more information on classes, or request direct one-on-one training with your account manager. When using the right software, you’ll see that tracking inventory doesn’t need to be a burden (albeit necessary). There’s just a better and easier way to do it.
About DockMaster Inc.
DockMaster is an industry-leading marine management system for marinas, boatyards, and boat dealerships. Visual Marinaâ„¢ management includes storage & billing, occupancy tracking, reservations, and dry stack management, including integrations to leading consumer applications for boat rentals, online reservations, concierge/launch scheduling, and our new fuel integration with FuelCloud. To request a free demo, click here.