Blog

You buy products by the case, but you sell in both cases and individual units. Whether hydraulic hoses, pipe couplers, metal coils, or something else, when you order in one unit of measure and sell in another it makes it hard to do conversions correctly. And if you get it wrong, you can find yourself dealing with costly errors, stock miscounts, and margin losses.

You’ve decided to use an ERP system to manage your inventory. You’ve been told that this can help you keep track of everything that is in stock so you don’t need to do big counts, and you like not having to shut your business down so your team can do inventory and you can get everything sorted out for tax season. Unfortunately, one day your system is telling you that you have 10 tires in stock, ...

Premiere Building Supply has been a fixture in Lancaster County, PA for more than 20 years. In the beginning they operated both a construction arm and a distribution arm, but in the last five years they’ve moved exclusively to distribution. They supply ProVia windows, doors, and stone veneer as well as other quality window and door products to customers across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

You’ve decided it is time for perpetual inventory, and now you’re faced with the question: how do I value my inventory?

SH Truck Bodies is a growing operation. With a 15% revenue increase in the last two years and growing from 30 to 40 employees over the last 5 years, their business is humming. Each week on the shop floor, SH manufactures about 40 truck bodies that they sell to distributors who install the bodies. They manufacture 10-12 standard bodies in dump, landscape, and platform varieties and also provide ...

Do you know what’s on your shelves? If your accountant asked you for an overall inventory count, could you give him totals that you’re sure of—without having to send your team out to count? Could you take on a big order with confidence, knowing that you can fulfill it, rather than hoping you have enough inventory on your shelves to deliver the job? If not, it’s time to take a look at your ...

S&L Spindles has been a local fixture of its community since the early 1990s, making outdoor decking components that people love. What started as a family business focused on crafting gazebos has grown into so much more—today, they make spindles, balusters, decking posts, pallet cut stock and even bale their wood shavings to sell as animal bedding. Along the way, they've also expanded into ...

For Horning Manufacturing, the “made-to-order” model doesn’t work. The equipment they produce has long lead times of 10 weeks or more depending on the product and, to make things more complex, 60% of their sales are concentrated within a 3-month window. Realistically, they need to know how much of each product they will sell a year or more in advance, forcing them to take a more proactive and ...

Inventory management is a challenge for many companies. It’s hard to keep track of inventory, especially when it is spread out across multiple warehouse locations. The more locations you have, like supply trucks or sales lots, the harder it gets.

Keeping track of product pricing and availability from your suppliers can be even more time-consuming and cumbersome. For a parts supply company that handles thousands of inventory items, as well as special order parts, it’s downright overwhelming.