How Restaurant Inventory Management Software Can Help You Save Time And Money

What is Restaurant Inventory Management Software?

A well-stocked, efficient inventory is the backbone of a restaurant business. And optimally managing a restaurant's inventory is critically important for any restaurant owner or manager. Not only does it decide the quality of the restaurant's customer service, but also the bottom-line, salaries, and upkeep. And in order to do this efficiently, restaurants have automated inventory management systems at their disposal.

Restaurant inventory management software is designed to help restaurant owners and managers keep track of their stock supplies and usage. Inventory software typically includes features such as recipes, inventory counts, purchase orders, sales orders, and supplier information. This information can help restaurant owners save time and money by reducing the need to guess how much inventory they need for the future and what supplies they need to reorder. Additionally, inventory software helps manage the kitchen well, monitor sales orders effectively, and improve overall customer satisfaction. This management software ensures that restaurants have necessary supplies on hand to meet customer demand at all times.

How Does Inventory Software Work?

While you now know what inventory management software is and the purpose it serves, you must be curious about how it works and the kind of restaurant technology it uses to get the job done. Let's dig deeper to find out-

• A restaurant inventory management software starts its work with inventory counts and tracking of incoming inventory goods whenever a supplier sends in purchase orders. While this process takes several hours of labor by the manual method, inventory software gets this done in minutes.
  
• With frequent and regular inventory counts, you can gain accurate estimates of the quantity of inventory used on a daily basis. This will help you place purchase orders only for the quantities you need, and prevent you from hoarding surplus stocks that may end up rotting from disuse, and incurring losses for your business.
  
• Inventory software also provides constant tracking of outgoing inventory levels and sends real time data to the Back House.
• This helps the kitchen staff make adjustments to the restaurant's menu when an ingredient is out of stock.
• With real time updates and alerts, businesses can keep track of their inventory, plan production runs, and make sure that they always have enough stock on hand.
  
• Inventory management software solutions also offers features such as barcode scanning and order fulfillment integration, which further streamline the process of keeping track of the restaurant inventory.
  
• Lastly, you can integrate your inventory software with other third party restaurant management software such as POS systems, accounting tools, supply chain management software, etc. to pull in data that can help improve your overall business operations.

How Inventory Software Can Improve Your Bottom-line - Accuracy

With inventory software, you can rest assured that your purchase orders and inventory stocks will be tracked with utmost accuracy. An automated inventory system will make sure no inventory item is misplaced or lost in transit and everything is accurately tracked at each touchpoint. When inventory levels are accurately tracked, businesses can avoid both, overstocking and stock-outs. This saves money by ensuring that there is never too much wastage and that restaurant service isn't disrupted due to shortages. Such stock management software will also help you forecast your restaurant inventory usage for the coming days or weeks and place purchase orders accordingly, so that there is no dead stock lying in the storage.

How Inventory Software Can Improve Your Bottom-line - Streamlining

One of the biggest benefits of using inventory software is increased efficiency and streamlined processes. With all of your inventory information stored in one central location, it's easy to track and manage all your inventory items, manage food costs, and optimize the restaurant's menu items. This means you can spend less time managing your inventory and more time selling your products and services. Restaurant owners and managers will no longer have to sift through piles of paper to get hold of a purchase or delivery order, and can instead do it with a quick and simple search of the inventory system.

How Inventory Software Can Improve Your Bottom-line - Zero Wastage

When running a business, you know that having too much or too little restaurant inventory can be disastrous for your bottom-line. Maintaining the correct level of inventory is crucial to ensuring that your business runs smoothly and efficiently. Inventory software can help you keep track of your stock levels so that you always have the right quantity of stock on hand. This can save you money by preventing overstocking. Excess inventory that may never get sold will needlessly consume your vital capital. Moreover, if you're running low on frequently used goods, the inventory software can help you reorder quickly so that you don't lose out on sales. This way, you can always maintain optimum inventory levels and reduce both, food waste as well as inventory expenses.

How Inventory Software Can Improve Your Bottom-line - Service

Keeping a close watch on your restaurant inventory will help you ensure that you always have the products you need to serve your customers. It is important that you are equipped to serve the menu items your customers desire, every time they visit. This will avoid disruption to your business and improve customer satisfaction. And having accurate data about which products are selling well (and which aren't) can be instrumental in boosting sales. Inventory software provides this information in an easy-to-understand format, making it simple to implement changes that will increase sales, such as stocking larger quantities of popular items or running promotions on slower-moving ones.

How Inventory Software Can Improve Your Bottom-line - Labor costs

Manual inventory management is time-consuming, error-prone, and tedious. If you still practice manual inventory counts, chances are you and your staff are spending several hours a week trying to harmonize stocks with sales. However, inventory software takes care of all the tedious tasks associated with keeping track of stock levels, so that you can focus on the more important aspects of running your restaurant. You can focus your skilled labor on enhancing customer service, honing new culinary skills, and managing your business more efficiently. By requiring fewer labor hands and labor hours to monitor inventory, you can save on labor costs.

Top 3 Restaurant Inventory Management Software of 2022

There are different kinds of inventory management software solutions in the market, some with excellent pricing plans, others with attractive features. However, when you are out to make this crucial choice, consider your business's specific needs and choose the Best Inventory software that meets these needs. Here are the top 3 restaurant inventory management software solutions of 2022 to help with your decision.

1. Zip Inventory

Zip Inventory is an inventory management app that streamlines your shelf-to-sheet inventory counts, tracks wastage and variance, assists easy transfers from one point to another, one outlet to another, and also helps with placing orders. With the Zip Inventory system, you can finish your inventory counts within minutes, instead of several hours done the manual way. Zip Inventory offers regular Variance and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) reports that you can use to track your expenses, wastage, food costs, and more. These reports will help you check wastage and bring down costs. The Zip mobile app will help you keep track of your restaurant inventory from any location and manage the operations from anywhere. The inventory system will also extract your sales data, inventory usage data, and assist with suggestive ordering. The inventory software will further integrate with any other third party management software, such as your restaurant POS system to keep track of sales and manage food costs and online ordering.

2. Toast POS

Toast is a cloud basedPOS system designed for restaurants. It not only takes care of order management, but also inventory management. Toast POS assists restaurant owners with real time inventory counts and automatically updates inventory price changes. Its detailed reporting and tracking will help you keep check on your food inventory usage and food costs, and also analyze future, recurring orders to improve your business operations. Toast's inventory system provides recipe costing and invoice automation to help you keep tabs on your expenses.

3. Lightspeed

The fully automated and integrated restaurant inventory management system will simplify your inventory tracking and stock-taking methods, reduce time for inventory counts and get rid of the piles of spreadsheets. Lightspeed will send you real time updates and alerts about your inventory movement, low stock situations, new stock arrivals, etc. The reporting and analytics system will further help you keep track of wastage, losses, control food costs, calculate recipe costs, and by doing all this, optimize your operations. If it gets too confusing, Lightspeed will also offer you 24*7 customer service and assistance with videos, guides, webinars and demos.