Exploring Office Inventory Challenges

Efficiency is the key to a productive, profitable, and harmonious business. Yet, your company might be failing to adequately store office supplies and equipment, overspending on items, or unable to track and monitor its inventory effectively.

If you don’t improve the management of your stock, devices, and office equipment, you could drain your company’s profit margin and increase the likelihood of damage and theft. Read the following advice on how to navigate various office inventory challenges.

Limit Access to Prevent Overspending

An open supply room or cupboard is a big mistake. It might be more convenient for your employees, but it will harm your company’s finances. If staff members can access inventory whenever they want, they might take more items than they need, causing the business to overspend on various supplies.

For this reason, you must appoint a supply room/cupboard gatekeeper employees can turn to when they need a specific item, such as printer ink, a new PC, pens, paper, or a new chair.

Alternatively, you can provide a small group of trusted employees, such as heads of departments, with a key or passcode to the supply room door. As members of management will be responsible for the company’s office supplies, they’ll likely only distribute items when necessary.

Track Inventory with Asset Labels

Track inventory with asset labels from Data-label, as they can benefit your business. The small stickers, also known as asset tags, can be applied to various devices, furniture, equipment, and much more. Once added, your company can track and monitor its inventory, determine when items need maintenance or repairs, and identify how they are used in the business.

Also, the labels will reduce the likelihood of lost, damaged, or stolen items, protecting the business’s bottom line. The helpful data will make it easier to perform inventory audits, as you’ll know where an item is and how many you have available to manage your stock levels better.

Protect Inventory with Policies and Procedures

Creating office inventory policies and procedures will prove to your employees that the company doesn’t take damage, destruction, or theft lightly. Encourage your staff to use items sparingly by adhering to various rules and expectations when they need a new laptop, a better PC monitor, or even pens and paper.

Keep tight control of your inventory by setting policies and procedures for:

• Requests
• Approvals
• Issuing
• Returns
• Reporting

Consider introducing policies and procedures for managing inventory damage, losses, thefts, and errors. This will give each employee a sense of responsibility, maintain office inventory standards, and protect your company’s finances.

Improve Organization with Routine Auditing

Routine inventory auditing will improve efficiency and storage while improving your company’s finances. To perform an audit, you must count every item you have on and offsite and assess the quality of various items, such as printer cartridges, furniture, devices, equipment, and more.

Regular audits can help your business to identify if items require maintenance, repairs, or upgrades. Also, it will prevent the office from storing useless inventory in a supply room or cupboard, as you could donate supplies to a worthy cause or ethically dispose of them.