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Warehouse Insights: Why Should I Scan Inventory When I Receive It?

Elizabeth Keefe

Jun 3 2019

3 min read

It’s Monday morning, and your new stock shipment just arrived. Out on the receiving dock, you pull the packing slip, write down any discrepancies, and jot down lot numbers. The packing slip is passed along and later manually entered into your system of record. In the meantime, someone else writes down where the items need to be put away and hands it off to the worker on shift. Were you counting with us? With four touchpoints for a single receipt, there is not one person responsible for the entire receipt. This slows down your processes, and what happens if someone along the way makes a mistake?

It is no secret paper-driven processes leave room for human error and serve as a major roadblock to improved accuracy. One of the easiest ways to keep business running smoothly is to start tracking inventory the moment it enters your warehouse.

This is where technology can help.

In operations equipped with a RF barcode scanner, a worker simply scans each item as it enters the warehouse, and the mobile device prompts them through transactions—from receiving to counting to picking and shipping. Sending the scanned data to an ERP like NetSuite in real-time, you’ll know what products you have in your warehouse, where they are, who put them there and when (and even how long it took to do it).

It’s all about NetSuite inventory accuracy

So, why does this matter? A key strategy to improve accuracy is to minimize the amount of times you touch a product. As shown in our scenario above, the more you touch a product, the more likely it could be misplaced or entered into NetSuite incorrectly. This also means any time you move your product, you need to let NetSuite know what you have done.

Paper processes create a gap of where the product actually is and what is recorded in NetSuite. If you’ve moved it from the receiving dock to the overstock bin but have not updated NetSuite, your picker can’t find it, or worse, picks the wrong thing instead. Scanning eliminates this concern, validating each transaction at the point of activity.

Removing touchpoints and reducing the number of workers who handle products does more than just streamline your business processes—it reduces errors to almost none.

Lessons from a NetSuite Customer

Averaging more than 4,000 picks a day, Candy.com was receiving a lot of inventory manually and needed a better way to manage their growth. They implemented RF-SMART’s mobile scanning solution for NetSuite and immediately saw improvements in their operations:

Speed – Up to 4x faster in receiving, processing and shipping than with their manual processes
Accuracy – Despite moving quicker, there is with less confusion for their workers and inventory is more accurate than before
Support – Through regular interactions with their IT department and RF-SMART on ways to further enhance their experience, Candy.com gained a partner to help improve their business processes

Want to learn more? Please reach out to our team of experts at any time!

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About the Author

Elizabeth Keefe

Elizabeth has nine years of experience at Sikich, where she worked in both client management and project leadership roles in the BioTech space. Elizabeth recently transitioned to an Account Executive, specializing in selling NetSuite solutions within the BioTech industry.