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For help on Inventory reports, See... Inventory Report Help
Inventory control is very important part of any business, but lets face it, inventory control is critical in a book store. There are several aspects of inventory control to consider:
Generally speaking, the more "sellable" books that you have, the more books you will sell.
It may be difficult to deal with this fact at first, but many of the books that you have in your inventory are completely useless. No one will ever buy them. They have zero value. They are just taking up valuable shelf space. You need to part with these books in some way.
You can throw them away (after destroying them)
You can donate
them. Hopefully
somewhere outside of your market.
This may seem very selfish, but true professionals think like this. There are a finite number of books, shoes, or tires that can be sold in a given marketplace. Never fuel the completive sources of your products.
Over stock of shoes, for example, are generally destroyed so that they do not show us at the dollar store. Why allow the dollar store to make the sale using your product? The same holds true for books. If you want to give them to Good Will, fine, just drive them 50 miles down the road first.
The best place for the books that you cull are in the dipsty dumpster, after being destroyed in some manner.
You can keep
them in bulk storage.
Bulk storage takes about 30% of the floor space required to store books an shelves. You can put these books in boxes and store the boxes somewhere (assuming that you can later efficiently find these books.
We are lucky, we store many of our bulk books in an 18 wheeler trailer. We have the space to park them. The best part of them is that they are tax free, much better than building, or buying additional floor space.
Each book takes up
space. You
need to figure the space that each book is taking to determine the true
cost of keeping that book in stock.
Divide your yearly rental, insurance,and utilities, by the number of books you have in stock. That's how it costs you each year to keep the book.
Can you easily find
your books when someone comes into your store or calls on the phone? Or...
do you have to get up and run around the store looking for books?
We have two lines coming into our store, and they ring constantly. I have no idea of what we would do without computerized inventory control.
But don't worry. Not having your books computerized will result in far less phone calls! Your potential customers will find someone else who does have their business computerized after a call or two to your store.
I can't begin to ell you how many books I've personally sold that I didn't have in stock. "I'm sorry, I have sold out of that item (that could be a fib, I just don't have one), can I place one on order for you?" But you must be able to determine this and conduct the transaction within a minute or so!
Here's a concept to stop and think about for a while. Let's say that you are looking for book XYZ. If your inventory shows that you indeed should have that book, but it is not in the location specified. Will you be more or less likely to search for the book than if you have no idea of whether or not you should have the book?
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We have a very large Internet business. We are selling the same books in the store as we have listed on the Internet. When we sell the book on the Internet, we need to find the book. Generally there are at least two or three books per day that we do not find at the location listed. There are many reasons causing this. Mainly an in-store customer has picked the book up to read, and places it back on a different shelf. Having a picture on the picking ticket see Internet Sales2 as well as an idea of where the book was seen last is critical in finally locating the book.
So, hat's the point? If you are relatively sure that you have the book, you are more likely to locate it in your inventory. |
You need to be sure that you understand the ramifications of the value of your inventory on your income tax status. See Inventory Tax Problem.
You need some way of counting your books... doing a physical inventory count.
After talking with many book store owners, I am shocked that they do not understand this fact! Yes, counting and reporting your inventory on your income taxes applies to you!
Are the decisions you are making regarding the books that you are putting in your store result in the sales level you are anticipating?
Unless you have some way of gleaning data out of your business, you are only guessing about how well you buy (or otherwise acquire) books.
