Warehouse tip 4: Automate everything and always know your stock levels
Over the coming weeks, we’ll share lots of tips on how to set up your warehouse as a newcomer. You’ll get advice on structure, automation and the physical setup of your warehouse. Today is part 4 in the automation category.
Automate everything
Automate as many tasks and actions as possible. Anything that repeats regularly can be automated, so do it. And do it as soon as you can, even if your business is still small.
Many small webshops think they don’t need much automation yet. Things aren’t that busy, and it’s fine to do some things manually. But unfortunately, they often forget to automate later on. When things do get busy, they end up just hiring more people or outsourcing the warehouse because they can no longer keep up.
But as a small webshop, you actually stand to benefit the most from automation. Here’s why:
- Automation is much easier in a small warehouse.
- It’s cheaper and leaves less room for errors.
- You have time early on to figure out what works best for you, before things get really busy.
- You’ll be able to grow more easily and handle busy periods with less effort, because each order takes less time to process.
- As a small webshop, you probably work with a small team. Automation helps you focus your time on more valuable tasks, like sales and marketing, instead of manually copying addresses.
That’s why we always say: “Automate as much as possible, as soon as possible.”
Tip 4: Always know your stock levels
Make sure you always know how many units of each product you have in stock, how many are already reserved for customers, and how many are still incoming. You need this information to inform customers about product availability and to place purchase orders.
You could keep track of it in an Excel sheet, but that’s not ideal. Excel doesn’t let you track history, it’s hard to use with multiple people, and your stock can’t update automatically when an order comes in. That means your stock list is almost always outdated.
Keep track of your inventory in a structured database that updates automatically when an order arrives. Most webshop platforms can do this to some extent. But many only track “available stock,” which is immediately reduced when an order comes in. That means you won’t know how much is actually on the shelf or how many items still need to be shipped. You’ll also likely miss information about outstanding purchase orders.
If you want to do it properly, you need an easy-to-use WMS that connects directly to your webshop. We’ll talk more about that in the next tip. Or try out how Picqer can improve your warehouse in the meantime.
