The 4 Types of Inventory Management Systems You Should Know

Posted by : Admin / On : 29-12-2021 /

Inventory Management Software is a technological solution, which helps businesses to manage their inventory well. With this IT tool, business owners are well aware of what products are in the stock, what are highly demanded products, what products they need to bring in their stock, etc.

For operating your business successfully, you need such a technological solution. And when you move ahead to avail such one, you can come across many options in terms of functional features, types, and so on. To buy the best one for your retail, manufacturing, or restaurant business, you must know all the types of inventory management systems. Here are some of them for your assistance:

1. Perpetual Inventory Management Systems

perpetual inventory system constantly updates your inventory accounts and records for additions & subtractions when it receives information on the items sold, moved to another place, taken out from the inventory, and so on. Many of you love such a technical solution as it helps you have better inventory management with no manual jobs and real-time inventory information. Further, it offers you highly accurate results and works better when you integrate them with your warehouse database.

2. Periodic Inventory Management Systems

As per its name, it doesn’t provide inventory detail daily. Instead, it allows you to know the starting and ending inventory levels for a particular period of time. It helps you track your inventory with physical inventory counts. After the completion of physical inventory, there is a shift of balance from the purchase account to the inventory account. You may select such an inventory management software tool to calculate the cost of the ending inventory with the help of FIFO, LIFO, or another accounting method.

3. Barcode Inventory Management Systems

In today’s world, an inventory management system with barcode technology is more popular and widely used. It is, as such a system is more efficient and accurate in comparison with the one using a manual process. Here are some benefits of such a technical solution:

  1. Elimination of manual data entry errors
  2. More comfortable and faster scanning
  3. Highly accurate inventory transaction records
  4. Automatic real-time updates
  5. Fast ROI
  6. Fast information on a minimal level and reorder quantities
  7. Faster documentation and reporting

4. Radio Frequency Identification Inventory Systems

RIFD (Radio Frequency Identification) inventory systems make the usage of active and passive technology for the management of inventory movements. With active technology, it applies a static tag reader for the entire warehouse. As the tag passes the reader, the movement gets recorded in the system. It works better for businesses that require fast real-time inventory tracking. On the other hand, an RIFD inventory system with passive technology applies a handheld reader to track inventory movement. On the read of the tag, the data gets recorded in the system. Active RIFD technology can read tags/data from a distance of 300 feet while the passive one from 40 feet.