Keep Your Etsy Business Running Smoothly

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When it comes to running your Etsy business, one of the most important things is making sure that you have good inventory control. Since you are dealing with homemade items, it can be difficult to find a program that will really allow you to capture the essence of what you do. By making sure that you use a program to assist in your inventory control, though, you will save yourself a lot of time.

Track Every Unique Item

Remember that accuracy is vital when it comes to your Etsy business. You need to make sure that you know precisely what you have. One of the challenges that you are going to face in running your Etsy business though is that each of your products can be quite unique. In those cases, you need to make sure that you track each individual item. You can create separate item classifications for each product that you have made. You can also include the information in the Notes that designates the current status of the product.

An important component of inventory control is making sure that you have an accurate tally of the things that you have ready to sell. This means that you need to distinguish between your unique items, which should be selling for significantly more, and your duplicate items, which will likely be selling for less. This will work easiest if you use software for inventory control. Since Etsy requires that you provide good pictures of your inventory anyway, just upload these into Asset Panda to add to the description of the item.

Include Quantity on Copied Content

If you have some merchandise that will be copied or have multiple items, then go ahead and use one item slot. Just make sure that you include the information about the item so that you know how many you have. You will need to be very regular with your updates on this one. To avoid confusion, one of the best ways that you can handle this is to use a ratio to demonstrate the number that have been sold to the number that remain to be sold. So if you have sold 17 emerald bead necklaces and have 28 left to sell, you would put it in like this: 17:28 or 17-28.

Update the Inventory Regularly

Even though Asset Panda will reduce the amount of time that you will spend on your inventory, you still need to make sure that you are regularly updating your information. Since Asset Panda lets you prepare item specific reports and search for information, you can easily update the information within minutes. Business Insider lists inventory management as being one of the most important components of a successful business.

You can handle this in a couple different ways. One of the ways is to have set times when you update your inventory such as every Saturday. However, if you make regular quantities of items, you may want to add that information at the end of your craft day. If you sell a number of items, then you may want to go ahead and update the information then. This is one of the easiest solutions as it prevents the work from backing up on you, but just make sure that you do it regularly.

Use the Notes Wisely

The other thing that you need to do when you're working on your inventory is to make the Asset Panda note system work for you. Sometimes it's easy to lose inventory, particularly when you're working out of your home. Go ahead and update your notes to include information about where the item is located. You may also want to include information about what you are doing to market it. These little details will make it much easier for you to track down that piece of jewelry when you actually do sell it.
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Krista has developed a passion for operational strategy via KPI management, streamlined processes, implementation of automation systems, and scaling Asset Panda. When she isn't attempting to help take the company to new heights, she enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, playing golf, cooking, and a good glass of wine.

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