Introduction

Inventory Management is a big task. It involves planning, tracking, and reporting on the flow of products and materials in your business.

To make sure you’re getting the most out of your inventory management system, you need to know what kind of reports to create and how often. This can be tricky because there are so many different types of reports that it’s hard to choose which one is right for your company.

This article will help you understand the different types of inventory reports you should be generating so that you can decide which ones are best for your situation.

What is inventory diagnostics & troubleshooting

An inventory diagnostics report is a report that helps you understand the state of your inventory. It gives you a snapshot of your inventory at a specific point in time, so you can see how it’s changing over time. 

For example, if your inventory suddenly grows by 10% and stays there for three months, then the inventory diagnostics report would indicate that your inventory levels are not sustainable and that you need to adjust them.

Troubleshooting inventory means doing things to make sure your current inventory situation is working for you. This includes checking for broken parts or damaged boxes that could cause problems in the future.

A troubleshooting report is helpful when trying to understand why an item isn’t moving on the shelf or why it’s not being sold. The trouble shooting report will help you figure out what’s going wrong with your processes and how to fix them.

Role of reports in inventory diagnostics

Reports in inventory diagnostics and troubleshooting is important for several reasons:

• It helps companies determine the proper amount of inventory on hand and what products are selling well.
• It helps them understand which products are performing better than others, which can help them make decisions about future investments.
• It can help you find out if you have too much or too little stock of a product, allowing you to adjust accordingly.

What is an inventory report? 

An inventory report, or just “inventory,” is a report that shows all of the products you have in stock. It can be generated by your inventory system, or you can manually generate one.   

You might also see these reports called “stock sheets” or “purchasing orders.” Inventory reports are a set of documents that the inventory department sends to the accounting department. 

They are used to track the total number of items in stock, as well as their location (i.e., on hand, out for delivery, or on order). Having an inventory report means that you can make informed decisions about how much to order and when, how much stock to hold on hand, and when to order more.

Why is inventory reporting important?

Inventory reporting can be useful for a variety of reasons. 

• Inventory reporting allows you to see how much inventory you have. If you don’t know what’s in stock, how do you know if something has been ordered? If you don’t know what’s in your warehouse, how do you know if something has been shipped from another location?
• It allows you to calculate your average inventory levels and compare them to historical averages. This allows you to identify any trends that may indicate changes in your business model or customer preferences. 
• Inventory reporting allows you to plan ahead for upcoming orders; if an upcoming order requires a large volume of inventory and you don’t have enough on hand, then this report can help identify where your inventory is located so that you can place an order with the supplier before they run out. 
• It also helps your accountant understand how much money is coming into your business versus how much money is going out. This information will allow them to prepare tax reports accordingly.

How to build a inventory reports 

• Create a column for items. This column should have a vertical format so that it can easily be read by the user. When creating this column, it is important to use the same format as other columns in order to avoid confusion.
• Create a list of items in your inventory using a vertical column. When creating this list, it is important to use descriptive names so that they are easy to read by the user who will be reading this list.
• Create a column for descriptions. This column should also be vertical in order to make it easier for users who are reading the report to see what each item represents.
• Assign a price per unit cost (or total cost) based on actual costs incurred or estimated costs based on historical data such as average costs per unit cost or average gross profit margin per unit cost etc.. Assign this value based on historical data gathered from previous years or any other reliable source such as third party data sources etc.. 
• Create a column for remaining stock. This column should document what you have left in your inventory. 

Types of reports every inventory management team needs

• Safety Stock Optimisation: This report will help you find out if you have enough inventory to meet customer demand. You can also use this report to identify any areas where you need more product or perhaps a different kind of product because it will tell you how much of your inventory is sitting in the warehouse and how much of it is on the floor, ready for sale. It also shows how much money your company is losing by not selling this inventory.
• Inventory profitability report: This report shows the difference between cost and revenue for each item in your inventory, as well as their profit margin percentage. It can help you identify which items are costing too much money, and which ones are bringing in more money than they cost.
• Stock levels report: This report shows a list of all items currently on hand, broken down by category and department. It’s also broken down into two pieces (monthly and yearly). This is a great tool for monitoring inventory levels, as well as keeping track of when products should be replenished or discarded so they don’t sit around unused for too long.
• Every inventory management team needs to generate reports that help them understand the state of their inventory, make decisions about how much to order, and help them forecast future demand. Here are some of the most common types of reports that your team should be generating:
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• Inventory Forecasting Report: This report is essential for forecasting when ordering inventory. It measures how many units will be sold, what price each unit will be sold for, and how long it will take to sell those units. The more accurate you can get with this forecasting report, the fewer errors in your ordering and planning process you’ll have when you’re trying to figure out what products to order from a supplier.
• Cost of goods sold (COGS) report: This report helps you see how much money your company makes on each product or service it sells. It includes sales activities such as selling at wholesale prices or retail prices, as well as all other costs associated with selling a given product or service. A COGS report lets your team see where there are opportunities for cost savings and where there might be areas where there’s little profit potential at all.
• Shipment Trends Report: This chart shows where most of your items are shipped from as well as how quickly they’re coming in. If you’ve got a lot of inventory sitting around waiting to be shipped out and you’re not getting any orders, this is likely an indicator that something’s not right with the way your business has been running. It helps you identify trends in shipping methods (such as UPS vs FedEx), customer preferences (such as urgent delivery), or seasonal changes (such as holiday).
• Purchase order report: This report shows which items are currently on order and when they’ll arrive at your store. It’s important because it gives insight into whether or not you’re selling enough products at any given time. If so, you may need to adjust some things.
• Customer Despatch Performance Report: This report shows a summary of all orders placed from customers, as well as their delivery dates and times. It also includes the total number of items shipped within each time period so the company can see where there are gaps in production or waiting for parts.
• Inbound Deliveries Performance Report: The Inbound Deliveries Performance report shows a summary of all product shipments made within a specific time period as well as what went wrong with each shipment at each point along the way. This helps determine if any damaged products were received or if there were any delays caused by poor communication between departments (such as missing paperwork).
• Material Flows Mapping: This is used to report and describe the flow of materials in a supply chain. It balances the flow between input and output of inventory. 

How Formplus can help inventory managers (templates and features-signature, document upload etc)

You may be wondering if you should use a software solution or if you can do it all by hand. While we understand that some inventory managers prefer to do everything by hand, we recognize that there are also some advantages to using software. 

Formplus is the perfect software solution for inventory departments. Formplus is a cloud-based, web-based platform that includes an intuitive user interface that allows you to work on multiple projects simultaneously, so you can keep track of more inventory at once.

The templates feature lets you quickly create new forms using pre-built fields, while the signature feature lets you save time by automatically filling in forms with your customer’s details and then automatically signing them. You can also use document uploads to populate documents with customer data or other data that needs to be entered into a form.

For example, you can generate reports at a faster rate, track the effectiveness of your sales campaigns more easily, and keep better records of your inventory.

Conclusion

Inventory reports are vital to the success of any company. They can help you determine how much inventory is on hand, and how much should be ordered. 

All organizations that wants to succeed should be serious about inventory taking.