Grocery store owners are fully aware of how much time and effort goes into inventory management. Traditionally, retail shops spent hours counting every item in stock and documenting the numbers. On top of that, managers had to keep a close eye on what they had in stock so they could reorder anything that was running low.
Understanding Grocery Store Inventory
What is grocery store inventory management?
At the simplest level, grocery store inventory management is the process of tracking products from the time they're received at your business to when they leave your store as part of a sale!
Why is it important?
As any grocery store owner, manager, or employee will attest to, grocery stores carry large inventories and are one of the industries susceptible to shrinkage.
Keeping up with inventory management means your employees know what's in stock to better aid customers, and you know what's selling and needs to be restocked (or conversely, what's not selling and needs removed from your shelves). Additionally, proper inventory management allows you to easily identify when items go missing outside of a standard sale to account for shrinkage.
Lastly, and most importantly, grocery stores are opened to turn a profit. If you don't track what inventory comes in and is sold, you'll have no idea how much you've earned!
What's the grocery inventory process?
This process varies from grocery to specialty store to supermarket, but standard steps include:
- Products are ordered and purchased
- Once received at your store, they're updated in the inventory
- If they're sold, the inventory numbers are updated to account for the decrease in products
- Based on how many items you have left, it may be time to reorder
Luckily, point of sale software can manage this — and several retail tasks — giving store owners and managers more free time than ever. Learn how our grocery store POS system can make inventory tracking a breeze.
How Our Grocery POS System Can Help with Inventory Management
From min-max thresholds for automatic reordering, to a variety of integrated hardware options, POS Nation's grocery store POS system makes large inventory management easier than ever.
How does inventory tracking work?
Our POS software’s grocery store inventory system is the most powerful on the market, supporting an unlimited number of products. You read that right — there is no limit on the number of items or product SKUs for your business.
You can upload a bulk list of products or individual items, and the database keeps track of things like:
- UPC code
- Vendor number
- Department
- Category
- Cost of the item
- Price you’re selling the item for
After importing your inventory, you can set reorder points on each item. This means that you’ll be notified when a product reaches the number you set and it’s ready to be reordered.
You can also create automatic purchase orders linked to your vendors so that monitoring stock levels is completely out of your hands! And once an order is received, the items on the purchase order are automatically replenished back to your inventory.
See inventory tracking in action when you schedule a live software demo.
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Is there a barcode scanner for inventory count?
Another benefit of using our advanced POS software is its hardware integrations. When it comes to tracking inventory, you can use the barcode scanner to simply count an item or add it to stock.
Another integration our system supports is a barcode printer. While most consumer products come with barcodes on them, local goods or items from a broken-down case may not have them.
You can easily print barcodes in a variety of shapes and sizes with predesigned templates. The product name, price, and UPC code are automatically transferred to the barcode. Not only do barcodes simplify inventory tracking, but they speed up checkout times, too.
But wait, there's more! Explore our point of sale equipment and additional hardware integrations.
Does a POS system offer multi-store management?
The short answer? Yes. Well, not all POS systems can support this efficiently — but our point of sale solution is designed for growth.
Whether you already have multiple locations or you have big future plans, POS Nation's software ensures that all of your data is in one place. Easily manage every one of your stores from your back office and view sales analytics as a whole or by location.
When it's time to expand a store or add a new location, our team makes the upgrade easier than ever. Just let us know how many POS stations you want to add on, and we'll do the rest. You won't even notice that anything changed!
And since your point of sale software already supports unlimited inventory and SKUs, you'll have no issues expanding. We're in this for the long haul.
Do I need a grocery store point of sale system?
Whether you operate a specialty meat market or a multi-location chain grocery, having a point of sale system to help with inventory tracking is vital. The team at POS Nation can fully customize your solution to meet your needs.
Learn more about our grocery and market POS system! You can also schedule a live demo with one of our product specialists or request a custom quote.
