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Unlocking Advanced Stock Control Features with Sage 200

by RetailSage 200Sage 50Wholesale Distribution
  • Retail, Sage 200, Sage 50, Wholesale Distribution

In today’s dynamic market, stock levels are constantly changing, presenting significant challenges for businesses. These fluctuations can lead to stockouts, frustrating your customers and potentially impacting your revenue. For mid-market distributors and retailers, effective stock control is essential. It helps you meet customer demand and maintain your reputation in a competitive landscape. If you’re currently using Sage 50, upgrading to Sage 200 could significantly enhance your daily operations and inventory management. While Sage 50 is a solid starting point, handling larger inventories requires more advanced capabilities. Sage 200 provides powerful features that simplify stock management, boost efficiency, and enhance control. 

In this blog, we explore how Sage 200 can enhance your inventory management and control, focusing on key features such as stock valuation and reporting, batch and serial number tracking, and multiple warehouse management.

Understanding the Power of Sage 200  

Let’s take a moment to look at what Sage 200 can do for your business. It’s a versatile, all-in-one platform designed for businesses that require a robust yet straightforward solution for managing inventory, finances, sales, operations, supply chain, and customer relationships. It’s a cloud-based solution that offers real-time data, which is essential for strategic development and visibility into productivity levels. 

When managing your stock levels, Sage 200 provides comprehensive visibility of your inventory, helping you easily track stock movements and forecast demand. This functionality supports your business growth, ensuring efficient stock control as your operations evolve, and preventing both overstocking and stock shortages. 

The Importance of Stock Valuation and Reporting 

Effective stock valuation and reporting are crucial for growing businesses, offering a clear understanding of stock levels, value, and movements. Access to accurate insights and data regarding your stock enables you to make informed strategic decisions, optimise stock usage, and improve cash flow. With Sage 200’s transparent management, you’ll enjoy efficient operations, minimise unnecessary costs, and set the stage for growth and scalability. 

Enhanced Stock Control with Batch and Serial Number Tracking 

One standout feature of Sage 200 is the ability to track individual stock items by their batch or serial numbers. In today’s economy, demand can fluctuate significantly, having a system that allows for careful planning and tracking is invaluable. This feature enhances stock control, traceability, and accuracy. 

With detailed visibility of your stock levels and the history of each item; from receipt to sale, you can maintain full traceability, forecast demand, reduce overstocking, and quickly adapt to market changes. The ability to identify inactive stock items also enables you to manage quantities effectively and keep a close eye on finances and budgets. 

Improve Management with Multiple Warehouse Capabilities 

Sage 200 offers a powerful Multiple Warehouse Management feature that simplifies stock oversight across various sites. You’ll have visibility into stock levels at each location, along with associated batch and serial numbers. This capability enables you to optimise stock distribution while minimising the risk of low or out-of-stock situations. You can also seamlessly transfer stock between locations, which is particularly useful for managing van stock.  

While Sage 200 brings together all your warehouse locations, it also lets you manage each one independently, overseeing restocking, sales, reporting, and stock takes while maintaining a clear view of your entire inventory. This level of control is essential for growing businesses needing efficient stock management across multiple sites. 

Transitioning from Sage 50 to Sage 200 for Business Growth 

Running a growing business is exciting but also requires you to adapt your management practices to keep pace with growth. While Sage 50 serves as a foundational tool, you may find it’s time for an upgrade as your business evolves. Sage 200 offers a more scalable and robust solution for managing growth. 

With Sage 200, you can handle larger data volumes, accommodate more users, and access advanced financial and operational reporting, giving you deeper insights into your business for better strategic decision-making. Enhanced stock control capabilities, improved inventory management, and real-time stock tracking provide complete visibility across all your sites, helping you avoid low stock levels and optimise replenishment processes for seamless operations.  

Ready to Boost Your Stock Control with Sage 200?  

If your business is growing and you’re looking to ensure long-term success, we invite you to learn more about Sage 200 on our website. At Envisage, we take the time to understand our customers and their unique needs. With over 350 loyal clients, including well-known household names, some of whom have partnered with us for over 20 years – we’ve built lasting relationships. We’re here to answer your questions and discuss how Sage 200 can transform your operations. Simply fill out our online contact form for more information. 

About the Author

Picture of Chris Hawley

Chris Hawley

Chris is the Managing Director at The Noledge Group and brings over 34 years of experience delivering ERP solutions across industries like retail, distribution, manufacturing, and construction. During his 24 years at Sage, he worked with nearly every product and notably transformed Sage 200 as its Product Manager, turning it into a leading solution for SMEs in the UK and Ireland. Chris takes pride in the continued success of Sage 200, supported by Sage Business Partners like Envisage.

The Cash Stock Dilemma

7 Ways to Overcome the Cash Stock Dilemma with Sage 200

by Barcoding & Warehouse ManagementHealthcareSage 200Sage 200 DistributionWholesale Distribution
The Cash Stock Dilemma
  • Barcoding & Warehouse Management, Healthcare, Sage 200, Sage 200 Distribution, Wholesale Distribution

As an Award-Winning Sage Partner and expert in the field of distribution, we thought we’d share our thoughts on the cash/stock dilemma, which is something that many warehouse and distribution businesses struggle with, and this is often because they don’t have the right software to manage all the requirements they have. Critically, it’s about the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing. It’s about keeping all departments in tune with each other, so that the warning signs appear before reaching full impact.

We’ve summarized 7 considerations for this cash/stock dilemma below. If you’d like to read more on this topic, why not download our Cash Stock Dilemma e-book and learn more about how Sage 200 can help address these critical challenges?

1. Inventory Levels and Forecasting

Balancing stock levels can be tricky. On the one hand, overstocking means you’ll be tying up cash in stock that doesn’t turn quickly and it can prevent you from investing this cash elsewhere. On the other hand, understocking means you may lose business due to insufficient stock levels and miss out on future orders due to customers going elsewhere. Understocking can result in you having to pay higher prices to source from an alternative supplier to fulfil orders too.

2. Courier Tracking

When distributors don’t have all the dots joined up with their couriers, it can lead to time-consuming, messy and inefficient processes. It also makes it more difficult to keep customers up-to-date with expected delivery information which can result in dissatisfaction and cause customers to take their business elsewhere, impacting your bottom line. The last mile delivery optimisation is crucial and the more integrated your courier process is, the more efficient your operation will be with a noticeable reduction in customer queries regarding delivery times and dates.

3. Pre-Allocations and Prioritisation

Many distributors will create purchase orders and then when the stock comes in, their system will allocate items based on the sales order date. However, this isn’t always the most efficient way to do things and it can cause problems. Getting this bit right and having a pre-allocation system in place can help keep your bottom line healthy.

4. Container Management

The uncertainty that comes from not being able to track containers, compare provisional dates with actual dates and automatically update all purchase orders, will have a direct impact on the customer experience.

5. Procurement

From our experience, many distribution organisations operate ad-hoc/semi-automated procurement processes. For example, items can be purchased without proper item codes (e.g. miscellaneous), goods can come in be placed in the wrong location such as an aisle, shelf, bin or even warehouse, and inspections that should be carried out systematically can be somewhat hit-and-miss. Purchase authorisation rules can often be loose or sometimes even too rigid and cumbersome resulting in productivity losses. Continuing to operate like this can result in many problems.

As procurement is a critical piece of the of the distribution/supply chain puzzle, it’s important that this it’s managed correctly.

6. Sales Orders

Similar to the procurement process, managing the sales order process is critical. The secret is having a process that is both seamless and efficient, where the sales/administrative operative has all the relevant information right in front of them. Mistakes made at the sales order entry stage will be carried through to procurement, despatch, finance and customer service, so a reduction in errors will have a positive impact on the bottom line.

It’s about having access to the right data at the right time. Simple things like accessing historical orders, copy lines, view back orders etc, can cut down on unproductive time and will reduce the margin for error.

7. Warehouse Management

The right software can make it easy for warehouse managers to manage everything from picking and despatching orders to writing off damaged stock and transferring stock in the warehouse. The tools available to them will make their day-to-day responsibilities much easier and they can ensure that nothing important is being overlooked. Having fully integrated processes and access to real-time stock updates can enable quicker and more accurate stock picking, resulting in fewer returns, as well as quicker and more accurate stock receipting, resulting in better stock accuracy.

The right system to fit your distribution business

We’d love to share our guide with you where we explore Sage 200 features and how it can benefit your business. 

On June 19th, we will host a webinar “Paving the way for growth with Sage Software”.

The following topics will be discussed:

• Accounting Software Evolution
• AI and Future Trends In The Market
• Challenges Facing Small-Mid Businesses
• The Positive Impact of Sage Software
• Choosing The Right Solution For Your Business

See link to register: https://envisagecloud.ie/paving-the-way-for-growth-sage-software-webinar/

About the Author

Picture of Ivan Darmody

Ivan Darmody

Ivan is a customer-centric self-starter with a passion for technology. With extensive sales experience in various industries, he has focused on problem-solving customers’ requirements and providing the best solutions to streamline their processes while maximising potential utilising both direct and indirect sales channels.

Transforming Business Operations with Sage 200 to Overcome Inefficiencies

Key Challenges for SMB Distributors

by Barcoding & Warehouse ManagementHealthcareSage 200Sage 200 DistributionWholesale Distribution
Transforming Business Operations with Sage 200 to Overcome Inefficiencies
  • Barcoding & Warehouse Management, Healthcare, Sage 200, Sage 200 Distribution, Wholesale Distribution

SMB distribution businesses are an essential part of the business landscape, providing an extensive range of products and services to organisations in the small and medium business (SMB) sector. Distributors are a reliable and cost-effective resource for growing businesses, helping them to reduce their costs and increase their efficiency whilst meeting the needs of their customers and delivering a reliable service.

Although they play such a key role in the success of small and medium businesses, distributors face many challenges to remain successful and competitive. Both external and internal challenges impact the day-to-day operations of SMB distributors, and being aware of these common challenges can help them to better prepare and manage their business.

Below we have explored just a few of the most common external and internal challenges SMB distributors are facing in 2023. For a more detailed review of these challenges, download our free e-book on this topic.

When it comes to external factors, there are a multitude of challenges that can crop up out of the blue. We’ve seen how new threats can come stem from nowhere without much notice. We’ve had a few years of global challenges with knock on affects for distributors from economic downturns to energy crisis to technological advancements, and unfortunately, things that are outside of SMB distributors’ control can have a big impact on their bottom line.

E-Commerce

Changes in the way consumers shop are having an impact on SMB distribution businesses. Advancements in technology and the increase in e-commerce websites gives manufacturers the option to ship directly to consumers, sometimes even taking the distributors and retailers completely out of the equation. Changes in consumer demand can also impact SMB distributors. We’ve also seen shifts in customer demands over the past few years. Remaining agile and relevant is fundamental for any distribution business.

Knowledge of your Consumer

There was a time when businesses knew their competitors inside out. They knew everything about them and knew how to compete against them. Today, the landscape moves so quickly, that new competitors can spring out of anywhere. Competitors don’t necessarily need to be built on the same model as more established businesses, in fact newer competitors are more than likely built with technology and agility at its core. New entrants will prompt distributors to raise their game and force, with less focus on price and more focus on customer service, reputation and availability of product.

Internal Challenges

From an internal perspective, challenges can present themselves from many different angles including staffing (shortages and skill-set alignment) and systems and processes. While we can’t control all the external challenges, we do have control over the internal challenges such as cash flow and profitability.

KPI’s

Having up-to-date insights and clearly being able to see what’s happening with your finances is paramount. Yet, many SMB distributors don’t have sufficient data to run their business.

Planning and Forecasting

Data is a hot topic now. It’s essentially about knowing instantly what’s going on in your business, removing the guesswork. It’s about forecasting and planning with as much precision as possible. It’s about knowing what to order and when (based on accurate data) to avoid cash flow or customer service headaches. It’s about spotting potential issues and mitigating these issues before they become a real problem.

Cash Flow

Miscalculation of the cost of goods sold is also a big issue for distribution businesses. This can lead to overpayment of taxes and shrinking profitability, and having a good overview of cash flow is imperative. Some distribution businesses are not able to determine profit by item either, which is crucial to ongoing success. And finally, the practice of ad-hoc pricing is far too common, putting margins at risk, where price bands or customer-specific pricing isn’t being set.

Overcoming Challenges with Sage Small Business Software

Environmental concerns, cybersecurity risks, regulatory requirements and technology are all high up on the agenda for many distribution companies. Navigating through these challenges requires flexibility, accurate data and a proactive approach, helping to turn these challenges into opportunities.

Here at Envisage, Award Winning Sage Partner with expertise in Sage 200, we help businesses implement intelligent, powerful and game-changing Sage software solutions, and we can help you to overcome the challenges that your distribution business may be facing. Should you have any questions about how Sage 200 software can propel your distribution business to the next level, contact our experts.