Monday, November 30, 2015

How to Take Inventory of Your Supplies

Knowing what supplies you have, when you bought them, for how much, and unit price; is all
very important to figure out your costs of goods sold.
You can notice patterns of prices to save you money, and you know how many of each supply you have to determine what you need.

I've found that an easy way to inventory jewelry supplies is to put them in plastic baggies with a paper label inside the bag. So I designed these labels to be small, and fit all the info I needed.
I keep an Excel sheet of all my supplies listed with all it's info {usually copied from the invoice}.
I assign each supply an item number for easier tracking.
I plan to keep a hard copy version in a binder separated by my supply accounts- working on this, will post more later.

Now on to good stuff, what you came here for...

How to take Inventory of your supplies

Step 1: List the things you need to sort & choose how to store the items
 example= Jewelry supplies- findings, beads, chain...
 I chose to store each jewelry supply in a baggie with a paper label inside.

Step 2: Decide how to identify the items
 Give your supplies an inventory item number.
 I made a list and added abbreviations to identify each supply type.
 Here's a Word document of how i identify my supply inventory
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-5rXH5KiVMMRUF4d0ZoajVZZ2c/view?usp=sharing

Step 3: Decide how to label items
 You could make your own labels.
  Or you can use these $2 labels I created, buy them here
http://www.etsy.com/listing/258160595/jewelry-or-craft-supply-inventory-tag
TheHandmadeBiz's Jewelry/Craft Supply Label Printable
Here's how my labels look in use
 
Step 4: Divide and conquer!
 Taking inventory of all your supplies is a huge job.
So you need to break the job done into do-able groups. Like one drawer, or box, or bag at a time.

In fact it took me 14 days {a couple hours here and there} to label and sort all my jewelry supplies. I had beads and such that I bought back in 2009!
It helped that I was watching my favorite anime, Fairy Tail, while sorting and counting!
Now go get some labels and start sorting your jewelry and craft supplies!!!
 TheHandmadeBiz's Jewelry/Craft Supply Label Printable