WMS for Wholesale Businesses: Rackbeat’s Guide to Efficient Inventory Management

WMS for Wholesale Businesses

In a world where speed, efficiency, and accuracy are crucial for the bottom line of any wholesale business, it becomes increasingly important to have a robust Warehouse Management System (WMS) to keep track of the most important element in this equation.

Namely, your goods.

When selling B2B, you can easily lose track of your batches of goods if you record the movements of goods in spreadsheets or other manual tools. Especially when orders thunder in and out of your warehouse like a Japanese high-speed train.

And this results not only in confusion on the floor.

You are actually bleeding a lot of resources over time by not having proper control over your movements of goods, inventory, and sales orders.

But how do you choose the right solution that not only meets your current needs but can also adapt to future growth?

In this blog post, we will explore the unique challenges that wholesale businesses face, and how Rackbeat’s WMS for wholesale businesses can help you overcome these and give you greener numbers on the bottom line.

Let’s just start by looking at the most pressing tasks that Rackbeat’s WMS for wholesale businesses can solve for you:

1. Recording of goods movements and overview of the inventory
2. Streamlining your sales orders
3. Reducing inventory costs, meeting demand, and helping to grow

Now let’s dig a little deeper so that you can see concretely how Rackbeat’s inventory management for trade and wholesale businesses streamlines your inventory management and helps you solve these 3 tasks.

How Rackbeat WMS Strengthens Your Wholesale Business

Effective Handling of Inventory and Goods Movements

Regardless of the large range of products you offer to your customers, it is very important that you always keep track of your batches of goods and the individual items included.

Each time you purchase new goods, register a goods receipt, and sell or write down an item, you need to update your stock numbers. It’s important to remember in relation to your finances. But it’s also crucial for having an accurate picture of your current inventory so that you can order the right amount of goods in time.

And as the months turn into years, the data will also grow larger and become very muddy to wade through. Here it becomes difficult to get a quick answer to questions like:

Where did the specific invoice that belonged to the order from last summer go? Who did you sell that large batch of goods to last year?

It increases the risk of errors, but it’s also just frighteningly time-consuming to have to run your inventory management in inventory sheets or Excel files, as DelsouX, for example, did before they found Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses:

“We started with what we call an Excel solution. It just became a lot of manual work, and it became difficult for us to find head and tail in it, because suddenly there was a lot of data. So we needed to find another solution.” – DelsouX.

You may also have experienced that several units from a specific batch of goods have been defective for one reason or another. Here it also requires some digging to figure out where all these goods are located in your inventory sheets.

Fortunately, Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses gives you full control of your inventory through these 3 features.

1. Automatic Adjustment of Your Inventory

With Rackbeat’s WMS for wholesale businesses, you don’t need to waste time either updating your stock numbers or remembering to do so. You get your inventory automatically adjusted as soon as you have registered a purchase, sale, or inventory adjustment.

You are thus ensured to have a revised picture of your stock numbers, which you can always access, whether you are in the warehouse, out with a customer, or working from home, since you can access the app from your computer, iPad, or phone:

“I occasionally use Rackbeat on my mobile via Firefox or a Browser. If I am somewhere, and someone calls and asks if we have a product in stock, I look it up. On an iPad, it’s incredibly easy.” – MobileAdds.

2.Product Management

Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses gives you full control over your product portfolio. You can attach all the information you need when creating your products, such as:

• Barcode
• Product description
• Standard location
• Selling price
• Cost price
• Size
• Weight

Afterward, you can keep an eye on all the products, quantities, and availability statuses in Rackbeat’s product overview. At the same time, it’s easy to search in your product catalog based on the products’ numbers or names. Thus, you never lose track of the most important aspect of your business – no matter how much data you fill up.

3. Batch and Serial Number Management

Unfortunately, it happens from time to time that you either discover yourself or are made aware that one of your goods has been damaged during transport.

It’s sad.

But it’s even more regrettable if you discover that there is a general fault on several of your goods from a batch.

The curse is complete if you cannot trace where the goods are located.

However, this is avoided with Rackbeat’s WMS for wholesale businesses.

Rackbeat’s batch and serial number management makes it possible for you to track your batches of goods – whether they are on their way to your warehouse, lying in different storage locations, or have arrived at the customer.

For when you have registered your goods with batch and serial numbers, you get a complete overview of all products with important information such as: date of receipt, expiration date – if we talk batch, quantity of goods, location, supplier as well as order number and customer.

Thus, you get an efficient and clear overview of goods with Rackbeat’s WMS for wholesale businesses.

 Streamlining Your Sales Orders

When selling B2B, the sales process is often different compared to retailers. Their sales channel is called POS and/or a webshop, through which orders are registered, prepared, and synchronized with the rest of the business setup.

But it’s just as important for your wholesale business to have the order management run smoothly and automatically.

Without a WMS for your wholesale business, it quickly becomes very unclear to keep track of which goods belong to the different customer orders that tick in.

And it affects the customers, as their deliveries become delayed or filled with errors.

And what about all the important papers, such as the picking lists, packing slips, and invoices – are they connected to the right orders? And can they be easily found if there is a mix-up in the matters or the customer regrets their purchase?

“We stood with a large whiteboard, where printed order confirmations from each day were written. There was no one who knew which orders matched which purchases. It was like, ‘well, we have just received this one.’ Without knowing if it was available.” – Miniservietten.

Fortunately, Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses gives you streamlined order handling and the opportunity to create a B2B webshop and link the sales orders with a shipping system.

1. Rackbeat’s B2B Shop

You have the opportunity to create a B2B webshop with Rackbeat, where you can give personal user logins to all your customers. With their user access, they then get direct access to your inventory, so they can quickly and easily place an order – without having to call in or send you an email.

It saves you a lot of time and order administration.

But the B2B shop actually also gives you a good communication channel with the customers.

As soon as a salesperson is linked to a customer order, they will be notified when a customer comes with an inquiry. Thus, the risk of misunderstandings is reduced, while the processing time is increased because you gather the customer dialogue there, where the warehouse and sales meet, with Rackbeat’s WMS for wholesale businesses.

2. Efficient Picking, Packing and Invoicing

Whether you choose to use the B2B webshop or you enter the sales orders yourself in Rackbeat, you will have a clear overview of all customer orders in the inventory system when they are registered.

From there, you can handle the entire order processing with a few simple steps.

You can download or print the pick list, so the packing responsible can find the goods that match the order. Once the goods are found and placed in the box, you register that they have been picked, after which you can send a packing slip to the customer and toss the invoice over to your accounting.

And if the customer still discovers a minor error when the package arrives, you can quickly find both the order and the invoice in the system so that things can be corrected.

That’s efficient.

However. If it is to become even more efficient, you can also get your warehouse down on your phone. For Rackbeat’s WMS for wholesale businesses offers a warehouse app, from which you can pick the goods and register goods receipts via barcodes with your mobile camera.

The app is of course synchronized with the inventory, so you do not need to go away and turn on the computer to update your inventory.

3. Integrate with a Shipping System

Since Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses is created with what is called an open API, the inventory system can be linked with most other software systems.

Including shipping systems.

This means you can follow your sales orders after they have left the warehouse. This way, you can better assess how efficient your shipping provider is. At the same time, you can print shipping labels and book freight, which gives you even better control of the order process.

See which systems Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses collaborates with here.

 Reduce Inventory Costs, Meet Demand, and Grow

Sometimes it feels like a roller coaster to run a wholesale business.

You have probably experienced significant fluctuations in demand – either due to the overall economic situation in general, seasonal variations, or other conditions that change your customers’ consumer behavior.

This means you could risk having too much money tied up in a range of goods, which you can only sell when luck and consumer behavior turn in the future.

Of course, you could lower all your selling prices. But here you would lose money, since you cannot travel back in time and adjust the purchase price.

No matter how we twist and turn it, you will lose money in these situations. Money that you cannot spend on product improvements, employees, customer service, or marketing.

On the other hand, you may find yourself in the situation where you do not fill the warehouse depots in time. We often see this happen when one manages their inventory through spreadsheets:

“We have several times experienced not having goods in stock, which we can send out to customers, because there is no control over what is in stock. Everything is tracked and handled manually and therefore human errors occur.”– Banana CPH.

It also becomes expensive in the long run.

And if your business is to grow in the long term, it is incredibly important to have complete control over the inventory and goods movements – as you quickly bleed money on that front-

Here, a database-based and flexible WMS for wholesale businesses becomes a key tool for you to reduce your inventory costs, meet demand, and perhaps eventually, grow your business.

1. Purchase and Sales Reports

Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses makes it much more manageable for you to keep track of when you have purchased, how often, and how large the turnover has been on your sales.

With the purchase reports, you can see your total costs from a specific supplier, or a particular product, over time. Comparing these with your sales reports, you get a pretty good picture of which goods and suppliers are profitable to work with in the long term – and which may need to be replaced.

You might also find out that one supplier is cheaper but somewhat slower to deliver than another. Here, it might be advantageous to choose the slightly more expensive one during a period when you know your customers need the goods quickly, so you can meet the demand.

The reports can, of course, not protect you against economic disasters in society in general. But they can give you a better idea if there may be seasonal conditions or fluctuations that mean you should hold back on purchases, or a specific supplier, of a product for a certain period.

And this can potentially release a lot of money that would have been tied up in your inventory.

2. Reordering Reminders

If we just return to the matter of meeting demand, it can be very difficult for you to have complete control over when to order new goods home if you do not have an inventory system – especially when you are extra busy.

It becomes much easier with Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses.

Because you can receive reordering reminders, so you can manage to purchase your goods before customers encounter delays or sold-out products.

You simply set a minimum inventory level for each item: i.e., the smallest quantity of goods you want left in the warehouse before it needs to be reordered. Here, you can advantageously track a sensible minimum inventory level through your purchase and sales reports.

Once you have told Rackbeat what the minimum inventory level is, you will automatically receive a message telling you that it’s time for a new shopping trip.

2. Rackbeat is a Scalable System

If you dream of expanding your product portfolio, buying additional storage, or hiring employees to work in your inventory system, Rackbeat WMS for wholesale can support your growth.

There are no limits to how many products, sales orders, or customers you can create in the inventory system. You can also create additional warehouse locations, so you can get the polished overview of all the warehouses you manage, no matter how far apart they are geographically located.

At the same time, multiple users can work in the same dashboards, which means that your business is not dependent on you or the person responsible for the inventory system. You can also easily change languages and adapt goods, purchases and sales overviews to each employee’s preferences.

Finally, you are not forced to spend money on a lot of extra features that you do not need at the current time. You can always add more users, add-on modules or upgrade your subscription at Rackbeat.

In this way, you are not limited in functionality or expansion options when you need to grow your business with Rackbeat WMS for wholesale businesses.

How Do You Get Started with Rackbeat WMS for Wholesale Businesses?

If you are interested in exploring how Rackbeat WMS can benefit your wholesale business, we recommend that you join a non-binding presentation of the system with one of our product specialists.

Furthermore, we offer you the opportunity to try the system yourself. We provide a free 14-day trial period, with no obligations, so you can explore all the features of the system. For an easier start, we recommend that you choose “Create with demo data,” which gives you access to predefined products, suppliers, and customers, so you can save time and avoid having to create these yourself.