Stockouts could be one among a retailer’s nightmare. Not only do they lead to lost sales, but out-of-stocks also result in reduced customer satisfaction and lower loyalty levels. Shoppers often feel let down when you don’t have what they’re looking for, and the last thing you want is to disappoint customers.

There are a number of reasons why retailers are unable to track their inventories properly. That's why they go out of stock. One is inaccurate data. Inaccurate data is often obtained from the manual retail stocktaking. When what has been recorded doesn’t match what’s in store, the problem can be traced up to the misplaced products, returns, shipment variances or stolen goods.

Another reason for stockouts is the failure to re-order in a timely manner. Evidently, this happens due to the lack of updates on your current stocks. Poor management of your people, processes, and technology can also lead to stockouts. No matter how organised your retail stocktaking is, the absence of responsible people to implement your inventory plans would still cause you issues.

Consequently, if you have poor communication or relationships with your suppliers, in turn, you will have missed or delayed orders which may lead to stockouts. Lastly, if you do not have enough capital to replenish your stocks, getting out of stock is always possible.

Fortunately, by refining your store’s processes, you can never go out of stock. There are tons of companies offering stocktaking services to better manage one’s stocks and one of which is AdvStock.

AdvStock has innovated its own stocktaking app to take the hassle of doing manual inventory for your retail stores. The very first step to avoid mishaps or discrepancies in your inventory systems is to make use of inventory management apps that will implement a cloud-based inventory system. You can stay away from manual stocktaking because aside from it being time-consuming, it is more prone to human errors.

AdvStock also offers an inventory tracking app which may be widely useful for retailers who have multiple stores. This application will enable you to track your inventories in multiple stores without being there physically.

Now, every retailer should take note that even when their inventory management apps are in place, accurate numbers cannot be achieved without regular tracking and updating. Avoiding stockouts requires you to have real-time information on what you have (or don’t have) on hand.

If you ever fail to re-order in a timely manner, you can let your inventory tracking app work for you. It will provide detailed reports on your remaining stocks and location reports on stocks which need replenishment. If you’re afraid of leaving your comfort of doing manual stocktaking, you have to eliminate that fear. AdvStock actually has a very friendly inventory scanning system that you can set up on your own. This system will deliver real-time stocktaking services that will let you stay away from stockouts.

Our inventory scanning system at Advstock is also very friendly as you will be able to use a stocktaking app that can be managed using a smartphone or a tablet. Who would not actually want a handy solution? The bottomline is, you get to eliminate discrepancies that may lead you to mistakenly think that you have an item in stock when you don’t, so you end up re-ordering the wrong products or quantities.

Demand forecasting is also something our stocktaking services at AdvStock can handle. Being able to accurately anticipate demand will let you plan ahead on what products to reorder and when to reorder. Manual demand forecasting can be too much of a hassle especially when you are dealing with so many things about your store. With our stocktaking apps, you can just rest and look into demand reports intelligently produced by our software.

It is important as well to take note, that behind all these stockouts are your store’s people, processes and technology. No matter how firm your inventory system is, you always need to make sure that your people, your processes and your technology are all aligned to your store’s goals. Only then, you’ll be able to get away from stockouts.