Local Line Guide: Use Advanced Inventory to Save Time on Your Farm

To help our customers better manage their inventories, we created Advanced Inventory. This feature allows you to create multiple packages, units, and prices for one set of inventory for one product.

Tracking your inventory is a difficult task. It can be a source of error and frustration in your business. Don’t let it be!

How Advanced Inventory Works

With food, products often are tracked by weight amount instead of as individual units.

For example, if you sell potatoes, you would sell the products at a price per pound and not as a single potato. This is because food comes in all shapes and sizes. If we sold each potato as it was exactly like the other, you would end up losing a lot of money! 

Additionally, these types of products are often sold in different packaging sizes. For example, potatoes come in 5 lb, 7lb, and 10 lb bags. 

If you create two or more separate product listings for each bag size, how do you accurately update the inventory? 

This is where Advanced Inventory comes in. This feature allows you to pool your inventory but still offer different package sizes for the same product. 

Advanced Inventory in Action:

You currently have 100 lbs of potatoes in your inventory. You want to sell your potatoes in 5 lb and 7 lb bags. Advanced Inventory would allow you to create one product (potatoes) measured in pounds with as many package sizes as you wish. The system will automatically pool the inventory and subtract accordingly as the orders come in.

So, if three customers order the 5 lb bag and ten customers order the 7 lb bag, the inventory would automatically update to a total of 15 lbs remaining.

(3 customers x 5 lbs) + (10 customers x 7 lbs) = 85 lbs potatoes sold

100 lbs total - 85 lbs sold = 15 lbs remaining inventory

Therefore, instead of having to go back and manage each product listing individually and subtracting from the overall inventory manually, the system will do it all for you automatically. Here are some additional features:

Benefits of Advanced Inventory:

Saved Time

As a farmer, your time is precious. There are many tasks to be done, and nowhere near enough time in a day to complete everything. Advanced Inventory saves you an immense amount of time by tracking your inventory as customers order in real-time. It also pools all inventory into one so that you can offer different packages to your customers without the difficult logistics of tracking this. 

Significant Inventory Error Reduction

With every manual task, there is a higher chance of errors occurring. The more complicated your packaging and product type, such as selling produce or meat, the harder and harder it becomes to track everything. A system where the inventory is pooled and updated as customers order in real-time will significantly reduce the chance of missing, lost, or unaccounted inventory. 

Additionally, when using an online store without Advanced Inventory, you risk not having enough stock if you are not continuously updating manually. 

For example, you create two separate package listings for the same product: one for a 5 lb bag and one for a 7 lb bag, based on the same pooled inventory (100 lb). 

After a few weeks, the total inventory of all the potatoes has reduced to 10 lbs, however, was not updated respectively to each product listing. At the same time, one order for the 5 lb bag and one for the 7 lb bag is logged. In this situation, one customer will not be able to get their desired product. 

Specialized Packages for Customer Type

Another exciting feature of Advanced Inventory is that you can create specific packages for price lists. If you sell to multiple different sales channels, such as wholesale or household, you may want to offer different package sizing.

For example, for your wholesale customers, you may want to provide larger packaging than you would offer to your household customers. The same inventory would span across all price lists, so no matter who is ordering your products, the inventory will adjust accordingly. 

How to Sell through Multiple Sales Channels

Sell farm products to chefs, grocery stores, and households online using one inventory.

In this guide, we go through the best ways to organize and use your online store to the fullest. Use this easy-to-follow farm-focused handbook to diversify your sales channels today!

Spending time tracking pooled inventory can be confusing, time-consuming, and inefficient. You do not want to risk producing errors and leaving your customers with insufficient orders. If managing inventory is getting you down, consider adding Advanced Inventory to your Local Line subscription today!

Running your business is hard work. We want to help make it a little bit easier.

Try Local Line for yourself for free today!

Used by all types of local food suppliers, Local Line helps you sell online, communicate with customers, and manage your business all in one place.