Tired of dusty spreadsheets and manual counting that eats into your day? You should think about ditching the paper chaos and upgrading your inventory management with the magic of barcode scanning. Imagine this: a simple scan instantly reveals where your materials are, what you have, and what you need – no more guesswork or wasted time. Buckle up, scanner in hand, as we dive into the barcode revolution!
Table of Contents:
- What is barcode scanning?
- Improved receiving
- Easily put away materials
- Locate your inventory on hand
What is Barcode Scanning?
Whether you deal with individual serialized items, or quantities of parts or materials, barcodes are everywhere. If your organization does not use them, your suppliers or the original manufacturer most likely does. With the right system, you can use any of these existing barcodes, or create your own, to access loads of information at your fingertips. Once scanned, material can be received, put away, consumed, and more. Scanners today look and feel much like a new phone. Why should you manually complete tasks when it can be done with a pull of a scanner trigger?
Improved Receiving
How do you currently receive inventory? Do you grab a packing list from the driver, have someone check all items manually, then hand that paper to the office to record in your inventory system or ERP? With barcodes and the right scanning app you can pull up the PO on the scanner, select the item to receive, and start scanning vendor barcodes. If you’d like, take a picture with the scanner of the receiving paperwork. Subesquently, the PO receipt or packing list is automatically sent to be processed in your ERP. No manual entry! If you need to barcode the items with your own labels, print right from the scanner.
Putaway Materials
How do you currently put away inventory after it’s received? Manually enter locations into a spreadsheet as items come in, and that spreadsheet needs constant maintenance. Maybe the quantities in that spreadsheet are accurate, or maybe not. After all, errors are so easy to make, and counting is a constant task, if there’s even time for it. With inventory scanning technology, barcodes can also label locations. If you know where items will go, locations barcodes can be scanned right at the time of receiving and the items or any quantity of items you enter is instantly placed there. At any time, items can be easily moved with a few scans, and all that information is instantly available for tracking, locating, and reporting.
Locate Your inventory on Hand
How do you currently know where all of your inventory is? Do you rely on one or two employees most of the time who just know where things are at? Or maybe you maintain a spreadsheet that requires manually looking up items and where they are located. Instead, with a scanner you can walk up to any location in your warehouse, scan the location barcode, and see everything that’s true. If you need to search by job, simply enter that into the scanner and see where all the material for that job are located.
If a custom inventory management system using scanning and barcode technology that integrates with your ERP appeals to you, this may be what you need. As a result, you will get information in real time to those who need it. Reduce mistakes. Save time and money. To learn more about the benefits of upgrading your inventory management system with technology such as barcode scanners, visit Construction Inventory Management Software: Your Secret Weapon for Efficiency and Profitability
