Inventory is fun! Said, no one ever. While it is one of the biggest pain points for a salon or spa owner, it is a necessary evil that can have detrimental effects on your business if managed improperly. Here are some tips and tricks to best manage your salon or spa inventory.

Professional Supply Budgeting and Monitoring

When setting a budget for your professional supply inventory, consider your service sales. Aim to have a budget around 5% of your service sales, which will help prevent over-spending.

Understanding how much product is utilized in each service will allow you to better gauge where your prices should be for certain services, employees, and/or clients (think: thick long-haired clients who use 3x more product). Monitoring your sales versus product usage is essential in inventory management. You can do this by deducting professional products in the employee supply usage screen in Millennium.

Performing Blind Counts

Having trouble holding your staff accountable during inventory counts? Blind counts will do the trick. Have your employees manually count your inventory without providing them on-hand quantities. Consider adding in dual control to ensure you have the most accurate stock level numbers. Send two employees to count on-hand products independently and have them compare numbers. Any discrepancy between the results means someone miscounted!

Managing Inventory in Millennium

Your salon or spa’s business management system should be able to organize, maintain, and analyze your inventory. Wouldn’t it be great if your business management system automated your ordering process by recommending which products to order based on best sellers or low inventory indicators?

Millennium is one of the few software platforms on the market that has smart inventory wizards. Additionally, the smart Inventory Wizard creates purchase orders and sends then out to suppliers by email with a click of a button. No more calling your suppliers to make an order!

Need even more help? Download our guide for best inventory management practices.

Want to learn more?

There are many ways you can ensure that your stock levels are properly managed and accurate. Sign up for our FREE live webinar on Millennium Inventory for even more ways to manage, monitor and master your retail and professional product supplies to generate revenue and relieve your biggest pain points. Register here and watch live on Monday, June 26, 2017 @ 1pm ET.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, Click here.