Why Using Electronic Barcodes is More Efficient Than Manual Tracking

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Tracking your inventory manually can be incredibly frustrating for a number of reasons. Using electronic barcodes to track your inventory is an easy way to avoid many of the frustrations that come from relying on a manual method.

Here are some of the problems that come from tracking your inventory manually:

Inventory Systems Done Manually Are Prone to Error


No matter how precise your employees might think they are, they can't be as precise as scanning a barcode. Even if they're trying their best, if they have a bad day or can't think clearly, they're more likely to make a mistake. Your inventory is also constantly changing. There's no way all of your employees can be on top of every department change. Using barcodes to pull up software records is less prone to error and will reflect any changes that have been made in the data.

Manual Inventory Tracking Takes More Time Than Using Electronic Barcodes


You may have moved beyond pen and paper, but if you still only rely on one computer to update your inventory, you'll be wasting a lot of time. Your employees have to remember what they changed long enough to inform their manager, who will have to pass the information along to the team in charge of updating the inventory. Going through that chain of command takes time, and data passed along in this way has more opportunity to become corrupted. Using electronic barcodes along with a cloud-based inventory system, like Asset Panda, will help you reduce the amount of time spent on tracking your product across the board.

Items Are More Likely to Disappear


Manual inventory systems are incredibly difficult to keep updated in real time. Because of this, there's no way to know for sure which entries are outdated and which ones are accurate. Having this level of uncertainty leaves a lot of room for things to disappear. You wouldn't even know if someone had taken it, because you wouldn't be able to identify if the item was missing, or if the record was simply outdated. Even if just a few items go missing, over time these losses can seriously add up. And with a manual tracking system, there's no way to determine where your product goes when it disappears.

Your Inventory Budget Will Balloon Past What's Necessary


If you don't know what you have on hand, what you need, and what items you need to get rid of, you'll be spending much more money updating your inventory than is necessary. Along with paying for labor costs, you'll have to pay for the cost of replacing your product, as well as purchasing new inventory maintenance assets. This could translate to thousands of extra dollars each year.

Instead of tracking your inventory by hand, consider using electronic barcodes to track each of your products. You'll have a much clearer idea of what's on your floor and can use that information to purchase items your customers actually want. Tracking your product in this efficient manner can help you identify what inventory isn't earning its keep. You can also put your employees to work interacting with customers, driving sales, and managing other administrative tasks. Most of all, your inventory management process will become less frustrating, more efficient, and easier to manage. It's a win all around!

By:

Bree Brouwer

Bree has held plenty of media- and marketing-related jobs over the years now, like working as a PR and marketing assistant to a Hollywood screenwriting coach, and writing content for three different digital marketing agencies.

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