Step-by-Step: How to Manage Your Office Inventory

A well-stocked office is an efficient office. Nobody can focus on their work if they’re always running out of printer paper or trying to find the right power cord to hook up the projector. Though managing office supplies like pens, file folders, and even break room snacks sounds like it ought to be the last thing on an office manager’s list, office inventory management is more important than it may seem. 

Employees interact with office supplies every day in dozens of small ways without even thinking about it, and it takes effort to make that process effortless—especially when you’re talking about stocking office inventory across multiple locations. Read on to find out why proper office inventory management can significantly and positively influence a company’s efficiency and profits. 

What is Office “Inventory?”

Office inventory refers to all of the supplies that keep an office functional day to day. From pens and notepads to the cleaning supplies that keep the bathrooms sanitized, every office is reliant on these small items. When they’re reliably stocked, they’re often out of mind. But when they’re always misplaced or running out, they’re a productivity and financial drain. Because what is office inventory, if not supplies that office workers can expect to have readily at hand? 

Here is an example of how proper office inventory management can make or break your office’s efficiency. Imagine one of your departments has requested additional keyboards and HDMI cables, so you place an order for them. However, nobody thought to first check the supply closet in a neighboring department, where there are more than enough brand-new keyboards and cables to fill this request. This imaginary example becomes even trickier when it’s your job to manage multiple offices. What if those unused keyboards that one office needs are in another building’s office altogether? How would you keep track of that inventory? 

This commonly seen example reflects the problems that can occur when your organization lacks a good inventory tracking system. When these incidents begin to become more frequent, the monetary waste adds up, and companies have less money on hand to allocate for other priorities. When there isn’t any accountability for office inventory, you’ll lose money buying more than you need. 

How to Keep Track of Office Supply Inventory

There’s a simple solution for managing office inventory with efficiency and savings in mind, and that’s to conduct all of your office inventory management in one central hub. The more spread out and variable your organization’s departments, offices, and buildings are, the more crucial it is that you centralize its management system. Only then can you be assured that you aren’t buying duplicates of supplies that one office requires, and which another office already has a surplus of. 

For companies that don’t yet have an office inventory management system in place, a manual spreadsheet seems like a move in the right direction. Still, it’s a flawed and limited one. Excel spreadsheets inevitably won’t be kept up to date and are subject to human error, and multiple employees trying to manage this data can quickly lead to version confusion. So, how is office inventory best managed? 

For reliable, up-to-date inventory data, consider a digital solution. An office inventory platform can do more than track and manage your essential supplies. You can also use it to manage your fixed assets: for example, office furniture and equipment, IT assets, and company vehicles. Not all inventory is created equal, either. Some office inventory, like computers, require regular maintenance that needs to be kept track of, and some, like break room snacks, need to be frequently restocked. It’s enough to drive an office inventory manager bananas—but a digital solution can keep all of your different types of office inventory in order automatically. 

4 Benefits of an Office Inventory Platform

Once you’ve decided to embrace the future and adopt a digital solution for office inventory management, you will quickly start seeing the benefits. Here are some of the most visible benefits that your organization will experience when it uses a central platform to manage office inventory.

1. Keep supplies organized 

Employees can’t spend their time focused on their work if they’re too busy looking for stuff. But keeping office inventory tidy isn’t simply about the physical space itself. A digital solution can keep inventory organized more clearly than if you were to simply group like items together on shelves. Employees can check in real time to find where assets are located, which is even more helpful if the supplies are located in a different department than they thought. When office inventory is accounted for, it actually gets used and employees make fewer order requests for more.

2. Extend supply lifecycles

Did you know a digital solution can also extend the useful life of your office inventory? Take printer ink, for example, which eventually dries out and becomes unusable whether it makes it to the printer or not. A digital solution can make sure employees use the ink cartridges you have on hand before ordering more. Then, it can examine past inventory data in order to calculate how much printer ink your office uses in a certain period of time and ensure that you don’t order more than you can use before it expires.

3. Conduct inventory audits

The most helpful way to make sure you have all of the office inventory you need, located where you think it is, is by conducting a fixed asset audit. An audit can eliminate duplicate and excess office inventory, recover lost assets, and even help you practice compliance on your taxes—because if you don’t audit yourself, a regulatory agency will do it for you. However, manual audits are time-consuming and tedious. For the most accurate audits with the least amount of stress, consider a digital platform as your partner. You can affix barcodes to your most valuable office inventory and then simply scan it with your phone to bring up all the purchase, depreciation, and maintenance information you need to know. 

4. Make regular restocks

You’ve got more important things to do than check the bathroom closet every day to see if toilet paper is running low. Leave menial tasks like that to a digital platform, which you can set to notify you at regular intervals when it’s time to restock. Not only will you never worry about running low on essential office supplies again, but this way you can also take advantage of bulk order prices and save money. 

Streamline Office Inventory Management with Asset Panda

Now that you know why office inventory is so integral to your organization’s success, you may be wondering if your current tracking system is helping your team’s efficiency or hurting it. If the answer is the latter, it’s time to switch to a modern solution that can track all the inventory you rely on in real time. Asset Panda's cloud-based office inventory management system is highly customizable and user friendly, so you can integrate it into your existing digital landscape without a lengthy training session for your office managers.

With Asset Panda, you can gain 24/7 visibility into real-time inventory levels and determine where waste occurs. You can set up custom reminders based on inventory thresholds that deliver an alert when stock is low or items need to be replenished or repaired. Asset Panda also provides unlimited user access so organizations can add as many stakeholders as they’d like, close the communication loop, eliminate guesswork, and increase accountability around inventory. 

Ready to see how simple office inventory management can be? Discover how Asset Panda can meet your unique needs and request your personalized demo today.