April 'Ask a Seller'

[tyler@ebay]

This month's question I think is really interesting - everyone has their own system, and I think it definitely would change from business to business. Looking forward to your insight!

How do you keep track of your inventory? Do you use any tools like Excel or more specialized software?

Feel free to share your input below!

Tyler

PS: If you have a question you'd like to see featured as an 'Ask a Seller' please feel free to send me a private message!

[ricarmic]

Hi tyler@ebay 

My morning coffee may have worn off too early today.

Does this question mean:

-how do you keep track of the value of your inventory

or

-how do you find your inventory item when it sells

I'm assuming the 2nd but I want to confirm....

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

My husband made up an Excel spreadsheet for me for each month. The spreadsheet has columns with all my sales & all my expenses including the fees charged by eBay & PayPal.  And it automatically adds up the amounts each month & for the year. Very helpful for me. I used to have to do everything long hand on paper with my information & add everything up at the end of the year.  So this is a big time saver for me.

[tyler@ebay]

Hi @ricarmic - the question here is more aimed at the second - how do you store and label your inventory to quickly locate it to pull.

However, I'm personally intrigued how you keep track of the value of your inventory, so if you want to expound on that I'm all ears! 

[tyler@ebay]

@2nd-time-around-jewelry - that sounds like SUCH a timesaver! That's a quality husband right there. 🙂

[ricarmic]

How I try to keep my inventory findable.

I've got just under 4,000 ebay items as well as more items on other sites*.

The golden rule is I have the item number and item pictures on each item's "packaging"

Packaging is:

-an envelope the item is being shipped in

-an envelope that is bigger than the actual envelope being shipped

-a box the material is being shipped in

I've got 5 main separation groups:

-little envelopes (#4 to #6 size glassines for the stamp folks)

-#10 envelopes

-6x9 white envelopes

-10x13 envelopes

-various boxes (from pizza size box to bankers box)

(and sadly a few bunches of stuff that doesn't fit in any of these nicely)

The items are arranged in numerical order by the last 3 digits of the item, so item 382468896631 would be filed as"631"

This of course means I have to check the description and confirm I've the right "631" as there is a slight chance that I've another very similar lot that also happens to end in "631" (I can remember once when I mailed the wrong item with the same last 3 digits out, about 10 years ago).

Also because of the onerous task of keeping the boxes in order, they are simply on the shelves in no apparent order and I have to go searching.

I've pondered moving everything to a consistent sized envelope (it would probably have to be the 10x13 envelopes) but it would just take far too much space do do it as I have a lot of small envelopes.

I keep auction items out on their own in date order. If they move to a BIN, then they are filed with the BINs as normal.

Because of the time to put stuff away, I normally also have a wee box of the "newly listed items" it is in order within each size of item (normally only envelopes).

This all means I have to have a pretty good idea what sized item it might be and how newly listed it is when I go searching. Probably about 75% of the time the item is in the first section I search for it. The rest of the time I have to go looking in 2 or more areas.

If I have multiples of an item, I have begun keeping them with the one for sale, when it sells the rest are put in the to be pictured pile again for the next one to be listed. This causes problems though because something that would normally be in a wee envelope is in a larger one because it has several in it now. So this is confounding my look up system but it is making my "to be sold" inventory management system (which is poor) more effective. Nothing worse than selling 1 of 15 similar items and forgetting that I have 14 more. This tended to happen a lot.

The numbering system I use also does not like transpositions. So far the large majority of my MIA items are because I wrote 361 instead of 631. So far fortunately my failures are fairly predictable, I very much like swapping the 3rd and 2nd last numbers so I find the item fairly quickly.

I do have problems with BINS that got put in the auctions bin or auctions that I thought made BIN that aren't etc.

While it works, I'm not suggesting it is a recommended approach!!!!!

*Each online site's stuff is in a separate area. The other sites item counts are much smaller and in their cases I have far fewer "sizes" and have condensed virtually everything except boxes into 6x9 envelopes.

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

Since I share a home with my elderly parents I have had to improvise. I sell vintage jewelry so I need to store a vast inventory of thousands of pieces.  I have turned my dining room downstairs into my storage room. I have many clear plastic stacking containers with drawers & have all the jewelry divided into catagories. All the jewelry listed on eBay is in a seperate section in plastic containers. I also repair jewelry, so have a desk & hutch with all my repair items such as swarovski crystals & tools etc. It is a balancing act to keep it neat & tidy & organized. 

[rcrawford34]

We live in a One Bedroom Apartment.   Items we currently sell at shows and markets are kept here and used to decorate our place between showings. Our place is reminiscent of Victorian Clutter. Not messy   each piece has a place on shelves walls furniture etc.  It gives us a chance to enjoy the items we have between showings. When the items sell we replace them with recent purchases or items we have in storage. Our decor is always changing

When we are doing shows etc it's very easy to pack  know exactly where they are  and I can usually pack for a show within half an hour or so.  It usually takes longer to get it to the van (We live on the 5th Floor)  The place looks decimated for awhile but is filled easily when we get back from the show etc. Usually have new items to display we have bought there

At times when we have people in some get lost just looking at what we have others give us strange looks they feel it's cluttered but they are only in for awhile we live here and it is very comfortable for us 

We also have a storage locker within our building  rented at a very reasonable  price. We pay approx $65.00 a month for it. If we rented one off site it would probably be $300 plus a month  Located 2 floors above us it's about 30 feet long 15 feet wide and about 15 feet high. It used to be one of the laundry rooms the building had  on each floor. About 16 years ago they built a larger one on the second floor.  

This locker is a godsend it's in the building only 2 floors above us and accessible 24 hours a day  We don't have to travel to it don't have to worry about the weather and is large. Nothing better. It is ours only as long as we rent it no one else has access to it. They do have an area that allows access to numerous storage units by other residents  in one area  but we like the privacy this one gives

The locker is where we keep other stock we only bring out from time to time. Have a good idea where everything is  but at times can be time consuming getting it out depending on how much is in it in the time

About once a year go through it rearranging it deciding what we are going to keep down the road and what we will wholesale off

I am finished working the end of April and will be off til Sept. Early May I will spend about a week or two off and on going through it

For My Postcards I use Hockey Card containers. Take out the middle insert in them and the cards fit well in them. These are kept in storage cupboards in the unit.  I have about 50,000 plus cards  but pretty well know where all of them are. I spend a lot of time going through them and often can place my hands on the ones I want rather easily

For book keeping I keep handwritten lists of purchases and sales.   Find it easier than using the computer. Just document everything as it happens plus less chance to lose them.  Computers do crash etc

weavers

[hlmacdon]

Excel is a poor substitute for an inventory program but if you are only selling in low volumes it is better than nothing, just have procedures in place to deal with the possibilities of workbook corruption and such.

Assuming most don't have their own custom POS/inventory solution, the next step up would be Inflow Inventory. In fact being a Canadian company, I'm surprised Ebay Canada has never reached out to them for a partnership or looked at a possible acquisition. Most cloud based inventory programs are rubbish, and I say that as someone who with experience with the major POS/inventory solutions at mass retail, but their standalone and cloud implementation is ideally suited to a small business that can't afford the high 6-7 figure investment that the big POS/inventor programs require.

Inflow is not cheap but having worked with it for other clients I'd say it comes about as close as it gets to something that works. Unlike 99% of other inventory programs it has a functional csv import that you can customize to work with any data source like paypal history files to generate your sales invoices, actually supports multicurrency properly, and has the reporting you'll need to generate everything from the sales/purchasing side for your year end taxes. For what the typical seller does it'll handle everything inventory related you'll need to do. Given the cost this is only something to look at as you step up from a hobbyist seller to larger volumes that require something more robust. Having something that centralizes inventory tracking, sales orders, purchase orders, and reporting is a huge time and cost saver.