HOW TO: BARCODE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

hey y'all my name is Ali Merwin and I am the owner of Stardust by Ally um if you're new to this channel I just started it like a month ago and it barely posted but I promise I'm going to try posting more just let me know what type of videos you want to see and sorry it's been like a very chaotic transition um into moving to this new space and then I moved out of my apartment and um got a camper van so it's been a lot of change but I know that a lot of people have been asking about my barcode system that I use to track my inventory um because one of the big products that I have in my store are surprise boxes which is exactly what it sounds like you uh purchase either 30 60 or 100 Surprise box and I choose random stuff from our store to put in that box and you get it for a really great discount so when I do surprise boxes it I used to do it manually and it was such a huge hassle to go into my store every time I had a surprise box and manually take out inventory for from each separate product so I developed a way that would help me out with my surprise boxes so that I could just scan different barcodes when I am fulfilling surprise box orders and it'll automatically take out to that inventory so I'm going to share that with y'all and give you all the tips and tricks on it and I'm going to link down below all of the items that I use most of them I did purchase from Amazon and I'll also link like the software I use and everything so as you will see I don't know if you can see from all the way back there but I have got barcodes on this pegboard for all of my wristlets and the phone charms and wallets and everything like that so everything in my store has a barcode because like I said anything in my store can be used in the surprise box so I want to make sure that it's easy since we do get a lot of surprise recorders to just Hammer them out and get the inventory correct because there's nothing worse than overselling an item and having to email a customer it is so sad I have a bunch of new products in my store that I just recently unboxed so I thought what a perfect time to show you guys exactly how I do this barcode Code system in order to do this you're going to need to utilize two different apps on Shopify also I use Shopify that's also an important note these apps might be on other platforms like Wix and stuff as well but just to let you know I use Shopify so these apps are on Shopify first thing that you're going to need to do is to actually create the barcodes because there's a barcode software that actually creates the barcodes and then there's the scanning software that its only purpose is to scan the barcodes and fix the inventory but so far I haven't found an app that does all in one so you'll have to utilize two different apps but it's retail barcode labels and then the scanning app that I use it's called quick scan but we'll get into that in a second first important step is to create the barcodes so up up here you're going to click create barcodes and if you are wanting to just create barcodes for your entire shop right then and there and you can select create barcodes for all products but I'm just going to do select products because mine um I'm just putting in new inventory that I just got into the shop I'm gonna do my pouches so we just recently got a bunch of pouches and duffels and all the things in our shop so I am going to find them and the one thing I don't love about this app is that like I typed in pouch and it literally is pulling up so many random things like hoodies it doesn't do a great job of selecting um like the the what you're really trying to find um but that's okay we'll forgive it but I'm gonna go through and figure out what I'm trying to get so I'm trying to get the large nylon pouches the medium nylon pouches then I've got small somewhere in here and then I also need duffels so I'm going to click add create barcodes for only productive variants that don't have barcodes yet or replace any existing ones I always opt to replace any existing ones because I'm printing them all out as new ones just replace them so that if there were any pre-existing they're not going to be incorrect when I print a new one does that make sense I don't know but replace barcodes then it's going to say barcodes are being created up at the top and then I'm going to go to print label so it tells you when they've been created so then you can click print labels and unfortunately you have to go back and do the whole thing where you go and find the products I I don't love that about this I wish that you could just create them and print them at the same time uh because you kind of have to do this process twice plus you have to go through all the variations as well um but let me go find we've got so it'll tell you um all of your variations so we can see all of these ones um down here then those were our small ones so let me find the medium and the large [Music] which are right here so yeah there are definitely some um and then I'll go find the duffel some little kinks that I wish could be improved but maybe in the future they will be so anyways I just added all those and then it's going to show you all of your variations so another thing that I wish you could do is if you'll see here it says set number of labels to match items in stock but I don't want to print 19 labels of mint 18 labels of blue like I don't want if that was a storefront then I would definitely want to because we'd be putting those on the actual products but how I set up my office area is that I just have the barcode right under the item and it's one barcode even if I have like 20 sky blue duffels I only have one barcode that I'll scan um rather than putting 20 individual barcodes on each sky blue duffel so that's how I do it since I'm not in a storefront so I wish that instead of like I wish I could just say I want one of each but I have to manually go in and say one of each which kind of stinks um but that's okay so there's also a thing called label template so you're going to want to create this before you get to this step sorry that was bad explaining on my parts um but I've got a bunch of different um sizes so this is basically just the size that your label is going to be so I have two inch by one inch labels but then I also have this full page one that I'll show you like for my patches um I don't if you'll see here I have these little um holders these are specific types of pegboard holders and they're quite expensive so I don't have them for every item like I have so many different patches and everything right right here when I move into a bigger space I'll probably invest in getting a ton more of these just so that I can have the barcode right above every single patch but for now I just have um like sheets of paper like this that have each so like a b c d e f g all the letters of the alphabet in whatever color um so if I do put a patch in a surprise box I just scan this sheet of paper like I said it's not my favorite thing but it's what I'm working with right now and then in the future I'll probably get um barcode holders for all of the patches so that is something you can do if you just want it all on a full page and you don't have stickers or labels to put on and you just want to put on a page and then scan it that way but we are going to do the two by one inch label and again like I said I'm gonna have to go into all of these and put one because I only want one label for each and this doesn't have too many variations so it's not too much of a hassle this is all of the things that I want to put right now so then I'll click print 26 labels and it'll come up with all of these print them and I right now have shipping labels in my printer I have a moon bin printer it's a thermal printer it's great uh there are definitely some Kinks here and there sometimes it stops working but that's technology for you but I'm gonna go ahead and install my little rolls I believe I got these from Amazon um and they're just two by one rolls so then we're gonna go over to two by one and it automatically puts flips to orientation which is nice to them I'm just gonna click print and you'll see it's going to start printing all of my labels [Applause] like I said what I like to do is just go through all of my shelves and put the labels right underneath them so I'll show you me doing that large nylon pouches in mint and our large pouches are over here so mint then large nylon patches in pouches in sky blue light pink y'all kind of get the gist I'll make this clip faster and you can see me doing it in fast time I wish I could move that quickly in everyday life all right so we did that successfully so now we have a step number two so we've gotten the barcodes um printed and put where they need to be but how do we scan them and how do we actually set up the inventory system so then you're gonna go over to Handy Dandy quick scan which I believe I pay five dollars a month for this uh which I think is well worth it up here you can see that you can increase decrease show quantity set quantity and shift into different locations a lot of times what I'll do when I am doing surprise boxes is I will um click show quantity and I'll go around and scan a bunch of different items to kind of see which one would work best in a surprise box which one are we not too low in stock of that it may have already sold out the cool thing about this is once you do the barcode system um there's not too much setup with this so uh really the thing that you'll be figuring out is the scanner so I got this scanner from Amazon I dazzled it did not come already bedazzled it took me about three hours to do this so do it at your own risk but you get the stand the scanner and then you get this dongle ladies and gentlemen if you listen to nothing else in this video except for this please please please do not lose this this is the only way that your scanner is going to work um this plugs right into your computer and allows you to scan stuff wirelessly now you can get these that have a cord um and then you don't have to like recharge it but I did not want to do that because I knew that I'd be walking around everywhere scanning things and if you are um if you have a cord you are limited to how far you can go big recommendation would be to Go Wireless but do not lose this because it plugs right into your computer and then you can do this wirelessly all you do to set this part up at this point is I've got a little converter now I wish this was a USBC dongle uh because I wouldn't have to convert it or put it into a converter but I put it in here and then um when your uh scanner is on that's the sound it'll make you do have to be on this page when your skin items and you also need to click right here where it says barcode um and start like typing um so not start typing but like click there so that it senses that you're about to put input numbers um or else it will not scan so make sure that is selected and then literally you just go over and scan something and it'll tell you how much you have in stock if for any reason I did need to decrease by four I could say four and then go scan over here and you'll see it took four out of inventory so that's super cool and then I want to increase for to bring it back to its original quantity and it brought it back to its original quantity so that is pretty much it that is how I do this inventory uh management system it has really saved a lot of time when I'm doing surprise boxes and I'm super super grateful for that hope it all made sense but if you guys have any questions or anything then comment them down below and make sure you guys follow me on Tick Tock and everything because I post a lot more on Tick Tock than YouTube right now so it start Us by Ali and mini Merwin my personal Tick Tock um and we do live streams a ton packaging y'all's orders so if you have found me through YouTube and didn't know we are uh always on Tick Tock then go check us out there and you can order and we'll probably package your order on live so it's a lot of fun but thank you guys so much for watching again if you have any other questions leave them down below and I'll see you guys in my next video bye everyone have a great day

Channel: Stardust by Allie

Views: 92,700

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Id: HAfDSp9VCSg

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022