What to do when you outgrow Excel for Inventory Management
There comes a time when virtually any business will find itself outgrowing the functionality provided by Excel. While often useful for minor administrative purposes, spreadsheets are extremely limited in their options and have significant downsides when used for inventory management.
The Problem: Why Excel Is Not Ideal for Inventory Management
Inventory management is an area that is extremely important for cataloging and analyzing your data. You need the ability to run complex reports regarding past inventory needs in order to predict consumer buying patterns. Purchasing appropriate inventory amounts – the goal of all businesses large and small – keeps the probability of future write-offs or write-downs at a minimum. It’s very difficult to cull that information from data sets in Excel due to the way Excel gathers information. An inventory management program, however, makes this data analysis much easier.
