Guides

Inventory best practice guides

Three guides for whoever owns the stockroom, in the order you would work through them: why stockouts happen and the seven practices that stop them, how to calculate a reorder point and safety stock with worked numbers, and how often to count so those numbers stay true. They are about inventory practice, not software walkthroughs — where Stockout does part of the job for you, we say so and link to it.

Where to start

Read them in order if you are starting from nothing. The prevention guide sets your priorities, the reorder guide gives you a number for each item, and the counting guide keeps that number true. Each also stands on its own if you only have one problem to solve, and each ends with a checklist or worksheet you can work through in one sitting.

  • Pick the 20–40 items that cost you money or a callback when they hit zero. Rank by annual usage value — units used per year × unit cost — and start at the top. Those are the only items worth a calculated trigger in week one.
  • Work out one trigger quantity per item before you touch any setting: average daily usage × lead time in days, plus a buffer sized for the longest lead time you have actually seen. A trigger you cannot explain in one sentence will get overridden.
  • Name one person, a fixed day and a tolerance. Count the top-ranked items monthly, the middle tier quarterly and the long tail once or twice a year, and correct the record the same day you count — a variance you look at a week later is untraceable.

Put these practices to work

Stockout gives every item a live status, per-item low-stock and capacity thresholds, and an alert the moment an adjustment crosses one.