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Can we just all agree that inventorying a monument company is a never-ending source of frustration? It’s like trying to herd a cat while riding a unicycle and juggling plates.
The inventory struggle for our company is real. It’s a decades-old game of hide and seek that began with the original owners and continues to this very day. It’s a game where the inventory hides in the most obscure places and the seeker has no clue where to even start.
Don’t sit there and pretend you haven’t played this game at your own place!
We’ve discovered old and damaged tablets hiding under piles of brush and discarded bases tossed among weeds. We have unearthed granite chunks that were kept because no one knew what else to do with them, as well as long-forgotten pieces someone was “going to make something” with.
I mean, look at this mess!
With a yard organized like this, trying to count inventory is a lot like trying to count grains of sand on a beach- tedious, never-ending and guaranteed to make you question your life choices.
Over the years we’ve tried a million classic inventory management techniques- spreadsheets, Quickbooks tools and such. But no matter what we do, it seems like our inventory has a chaotic mind of its own.
But, our perpetually elusive inventory and accompanying woes are finally coming to an end. And I can’t wait to tell you all about the journey we have been on.
Taming the Inventory Beast
Let’s face it, the thought of taming the inventory beast out back is absolutely overwhelming. It’s not like you can send just anyone back there to clean it up!
Nope!
You need a plan in place and the people to do it.
The Plan
Planning this project started with more questions than answers. Thankfully, my husband and business partner, Scott, and I have brains that are wired totally differently. So we came up with questions on everything from efficiency to safety to accounting.
We had these questions:
- How do we grab blanks to bring into the shop?
- How do we store finished orders?
- What are ALL of our pain points?
- What is the most efficient use of our small space?
- How will we achieve proper spacing for ease of maneuverability?
- How should our space be organized for maximum storage?
- How will we clearly label inventory items for ease of finding?
- What system will we use for counting and reconciling inventory?
- Will our count system integrate with the programs we run?
The questions went on and on!
But, when my husband and I broke the project down into bite-sized problems and solutions, the project became a little less daunting.
The Issue of Small Space
If you have a small shop and/or yard, then you know the struggles we face. Operating in a space that is truly too small is a problem! Fortunately, Scott excels at processes and efficiency. He loves nothing more than to sketch out an area in CAD and figure out exactly where everything should go.
Once he had an idea of how each work flow should look, he was able to sit down and begin sketching out yard layouts in CAD. After getting a layout put together he walked through his plan with our crew to see if it made sense and addressed all of our needs.
It would be nice if the very first draft was perfect. But, like a monument proof, it simply opened the conversation with our team and we tweaked it from there. Ultimately we came up with the optimal inventory layout for our company- yay!
The Issue of Accounting
Unlike Scott, my brain works best handling the accounting side of inventory. When it comes to accounting for inventory it’s important to have a robust record-keeping system in place.
We have used QuickBooks and StoneSpot together since 2015. This combination has worked wonderfully for our organization, but managing inventory has always been difficult.
Our use of the systems in place was limited due to our inventory being so disorganized.
For example, performing a full physical inventory count didn’t occur as frequently as we would have liked because it took so long to complete. And, after the count was complete the reconciliation took forever due to the uncertainty our disorganized yard caused.
We knew we loved how Quickbooks and StoneSpot integrated and wanted to keep that system. But we knew we had to better utilize it after we reorganized the yard. The question was, how?
Fortunately, thanks to our friends at StoneSpot and Worthington Monuments, this question was quickly and easily answered!
Consulting With Stone Spot
I began this journey with a simple phone call to Brian Rowley at StoneSpot. If you haven’t worked with Brian or Missy, they are phenomenal! They are always willing and able to discuss the software’s features and how they can best solve our problems.
In this particular call Brian suggested we consider NFC chips that work with the StoneSpot app on our cell phones. They had been through this process with the Worthingtons and had documented every step of the process.
Talk about easy!! All I had to do was sit back and press play!
I must have watched that video a million times! We knew we needed to do a mass clean-out and reorganization like the Worthingtons, but the NFC part was something we had not previously considered.
And, honestly, it intimidated me a little!
We tried the StoneSpot app early on when it was first developed. Admittedly, there were issues with the app, including it not being fully developed for Android users. Because of this previous experience, I was less than thrilled about the prospect of relying on the app for inventory!
BUT. I have learned that one must not solely rely on past experience in the world of technology!
Brian assured me the new and improved app was “up to snuff” and worked flawlessly with Android. But there was only one way to find out for myself—to download the app and try it out.
The App Experiment
As the only Android user in our entire organization, it was super important to me that the Android app operates just as reliably as the iPhone app.
And, much to my dismay…it does!!!
This is what it looks like when I pull the app up on my phone.
Just clean, simple and straight to the point! That was easy!
Buying the NFC Tags
To fully test the inventory feature, I decided to order 500 of these little round NFC tags. Yes, 500! That may seem excessive, but now that I am in the middle of the project, I am SO glad I went ahead and ordered so many.
Of course, I wanted my tags to stick to granite. And, honestly, the little NFC tags that double as stickers, were not going to work. If I had bought the sticker version I would have had to stick the tags to the polish of the stone…and risk staining. So, of course I chose to order the tags that are not stickers.
To ensure the tags would stick to the BRP portion of the stone, I also ordered these museum glue dots, as Brian had suggested they would best adhere to granite.
Once they arrived I was all set to embark upon this inventory journey!
The Inventory Experiment
My first step in the experiment was to assign an NFC tag to a piece of inventory. So I chose an upright unit I had on display and started by searching the StoneSpot app for the tablet.
I located the tablet and selected it to arrive at my item details.
At the bottom of the screen is this little button that says “link to NFC tag”. I clicked it and a green, pulsating button appeared on the screen stating it was ready to link.
I simply held the NFC tag up to the back of my phone on the top corner opposite the camera lens, and the phone vibrated and a message stated the tag had successfully been linked to the inventory item.
That was easy!
I repeated the process for the base and was ready to attach the tags to my display piece.
Tagged…But Did They Work?
Now for the true test! I wanted to scan my NFC tags and see if they truly worked. To do this, I opened up my StoneSpot app and clicked “Inventory”.
From there I simply selected “Search Inventory Items”.
Then I chose the little NFC icon at the bottom of the screen.
The screen said it was ready to scan and I was SO nervous! I wanted it to work so badly!! Because, ya’ll…technology typically doesn’t work very smoothly for me. It seems like there is always a technical problem that is usually caused due to user error when I am involved.
So I held my phone up to that little NFC tag and hoped and prayed for the best. I had to reposition my phone just a little over the tag and…..
It worked!!!
Game Changer
This success may not seem like much…but it has completely changed the way we do things!
In my next post I will show you how we use the NFC tags to track stones clients bring in, how we re-organized our yard and how the NFC tags save me DAYS on our physical inventory.
Get YOUR Chaos Under Control!
To get YOUR inventory chaos under control, start by getting a plan together and putting the necessary tools in place to help you manage it. The things we used:
- Monument design software to layout our ideal inventory storage space
- StoneSpot Video
- StoneSpot Subscription
- QuickBooks Subscription (other other accounting software that integrates with StoneSpot)
- NFC Tags
- Museum Glue Dots
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