Figuring out Inventory

[ArtistryBLH]

I have 4-5 employees working my booths with me at craft and market shows.  

I sell 2 items, dog bandanas and pillows.

I make over 30 styles of bandanas in 7 sizes and 2 price points.
The pillows come in 7 sizes also and probably  20-30 styles with 8 price points 
I average $4-5K a day at good shows and it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep track of what is selling and what is left in stock.

The styles also change often and I have a lot of back stock.

I need a good, quick process for tracking inventory. What have you found works for you?

Are you using UPC codes?

[Candlestore]

@ArtistryBLH ;

Yes Barcodes of any type that help you would be a great asset.  Depending on how in-depth you want to get with all your styles.

30 Styles of Bandanas

7 Sizes

2 Price Points

Question is what do YOU want to track?  Do you want to track which Style of Bandanas sell more, which Sizes, or which price point?

You could create anywhere from 2 Barcodes for the price points, to 14 for the 2 price points times 7 for each size, to all this times 30 for each style. 

I have 140 Scents and a lot of different sizes and track each one with their own barcode based off of size and scent.

The larger scents I more so just track the jars since they are custom made per request, smaller sizes I track to weed out the not as popular scents.  

Square for Retail can create barcodes for you but then you would also need the equipment to use the barcodes (scanner and compatible device with Square)

My barcodes are simple and can create any new item I come up with.  Basically its size then scent, meaning '16oz Lilac' is one of my barcodes.  With Square I name the Item Lilac 16oz, so if I need to search for the item I can enter it Lilac first or 16oz first to find the item.  My barcodes are also the 2D barcodes so they are no larger than a half inch square.

Hope this helps.

[ArtistryBLH]

Hi, 

Thank you for your very helpful response.

I would like use the UPC codes to scan/ ring up the items and in turn deduct it from the inventory.

we are so busy at the shows it would be difficult for each employee to have a scanner so I am hoping that our IPhones can be used as the scanner.

[Candlestore]

@ArtistryBLH ;

I know the Ipads can read 1D barcodes and QR codes in Square but I am not sure about Iphones.  The Android phones can not read the barcodes for Square natively like the Ipads do.  

[MayaP]

Yes @ ArtistryBLH using the Retail app on your iphone you can scan items. 

Good luck at your shows! Let us know if we can assist anymore. 

[G_26 · Accepted solution]

i have similar issues..  I make several lines - hair accessories, boxes, kitchenware, puzzles and ornaments 
and more.

I have over 30 hair fork designs, and do them in up to 12 wood species, and 5 functional lengths.

I do use codes and a scanner

I devised a code that I can read:  

dbb (designs by baerreis)  hf r(hair fork)  sr (simple round design) 05 (5 inch functional length) bubinga (wood species)

I also use a UPC app for a scanner that will allow me to make a bar code to scan the item.  the UPC is for our purposes only.

[Fibernatic]

Here is our experience. We have a natural fiber store with many many individual hand made items, so similar situations. First off, for internal use you do not need a "UPC" code, any series of numbers/letters in a "barcode" font will work.  . Any generic bar code is just a series of numbers and/or letters so you can make up just about any configuration you want. We have some knitting needles sourced from India with a really bizarre set of numbers that are defiantly not UPC but our readers will scan them and we input those in the square barcode field with no problem, and there are probably a 100 unique numbers just for those. But, with a possibility of hundreds and hundreds of different items, colors/styles/size, setting up the codes and how much labor involved really depends on how much detail you want to see. Do any of your items already come with barcoding? Could you just use those for the Square Category? If not or if your customizing wholesale items and you want a every items detail, IMO there is no quick easy way to get there. Some possibilities, Can you have the sales folks enter detail for specific items? for instance, you could have a square Category set up for bandanas with a generic barcode then have some detail codes hand entered at time of sale, for instance scan a bandana barcode, Bandana comes up in Square then the salesperson would enter a code in the Notes filed like: SYC (small yellow choker) We have some items from other artisans that are not barcoded, we dont barcode every single one but we have a "cheat Sheet" at the check out stand with their individual bar code and then enter a brief description in the note field, "yellow silk" This works for us, but like I said were not dealing with the numbers you are and we probably dont have a lot of folks standing in line. Hope some of this helps you but if you want very detailed item listing the bulk of the work needs to be done at inital data entry, after that its just a matter of running reports. Now one last thing, to speed the data entry up, you could down load from Square the item detail report  and add in the barcodes, we scan them in with our barcode gun, then just upload the entire spreadsheet back into square and your all set.. My wife figured this out and saves us a ton of time.

I would be interested in hearing if you found a smoother way to do this but to be blunt, managing inventory can be a real PIA if you know what i mean.

Good Luck