Best Practices for Office Inventory Management

Spending a substantial sum of money on office inventory can feel frustrating, as you’ll likely want to invest the money into other areas of the business, such as marketing, new technologies, or product development.

If you’re constantly repairing computers, buying power cords and cables, or replacing furniture, you’re likely eager to reduce your overheads as much as possible. Protect your finances by introducing the following best practices for office inventory management.

Limit Access to the Supply Room

Your employees might not think twice about going into an open supply room for a handful of pens, a pack of paper, or a better laptop. Despite being a convenient way to retrieve office supplies, it could cost your business considerable time and money.

An open supply room gives the message to your employees that you’re happy for them to take as many items as they like, whenever they like. Also, it will make it difficult to keep track of stock, which can lead to a sudden shortage of supplies and bigger overheads. Some businesses request employees log any items they take, but they might forget to or may ignore the instructions. For this reason, you may need to lock the supply room and provide items upon request to protect your company’s profit margin.

Apply Asset Tags to Your Expensive Inventory

Asset tags, often referred to as asset labels, are a great way to mark, track, and monitor your expensive office inventory. These small stickers can be applied to important or valuable office equipment, such as laptops, computers, PC monitors, and furniture.

When you buy asset tags from Data-label.co.uk, they’ll feature an ID number or barcode to make it easy to track an item’s location, usage, and maintenance or repair needs. Also, you can choose from different tag materials to match your company’s needs, such as vinyl, polypropylene, and anodized aluminum.

Improve Inventory Accountability

Improve inventory accuracy and security by making one person or a small team accountable for distributing, recovering, maintaining, and ethically disposing of office supplies. Limiting access to supplies and appointing responsibilities will prevent stock shrinkage and stop your staff from taking items unnecessarily. As your team will know one person or a few people are responsible for supplies, they’ll be less likely to steal items and may take better care of your inventory.

Set a Maintenance, Reorder, or Replacement Schedule

Prevent poor productivity by setting a schedule for inventory maintenance, reorders, and replacements. For example, businesses should replace laptops every four years for efficiency and usability. Also, your IT team should routinely maintain all devices to ensure they remain in good working condition.

Also, you must determine how much paper, pens, or printer cartridges your busy team will use each week, as it will indicate how often you need to reorder items. You can then factor the essential costs into your business’s monthly budget to prevent unwanted surprises. Once you have a good grasp of the reorder schedule, set up automated purchases to enjoy timely deliveries while taking some pressure off your employees.