Mastering Inventory Management with Magento 2 Inventory Reports
E-commerce is known for its agility in adapting rapidly over the past few years. That’s why for any merchant, having an analytical tool related to order management, payment, checkouts, conversion, inventory, and more is crucial to monitor the progress of modifications and promptly address any unfavorable trends and technicalities by changing marketing, and technical strategies.
When it comes to e-commerce, Magento, which is one of the top e-commerce platforms in the U.S. and around the world, has a 2.34% share in the e-commerce landscape. Magento, rebranded as Adobe Commerce after its acquisition in 2018, is acclaimed for its extensive customization capabilities, scalability, and advanced commerce features.
However, earlier in 2015, Magento 2 was launched and marked a significant improvement in performance and user interaction, introducing features such as the Magento 2 inventory report module simplifying the tracking of product modifications through the backend grid.
Besides this, we all know that reports and data analysis are considered crucial components of the E-commerce business strategy. Consistent reporting and periodic data analysis enable businesses to make informed decisions, understand trends and consumer demands, facilitate promotional campaigns, and manage inventory efficiently.
With these aspects in focus, Magento from time to time adds multiple advanced features to its inventory report to manage its stock and orders more efficiently. If you are a Magneto store owner still thinking about why you should opt for a Magento 2 inventory report or not aware of what it can do for your business. In that case, this blog will give you enough reasons to start creating inventory reports.
What is the Inventory Report for Magento 2?
In Magneto 2, the comprehensive inventory report provides a structured overview of your current stock levels, including inventory adjustments, stock changes, particular product updates, helps to generate credit memos, and many more. These reports, whether digital or physical, outline crucial details such as available stock for sale, goods in transit, and required inventory.
Utilizing an inventory report facilitates prompt error detection and aids in sustaining profitability. However, to utilize different features for inventory reporting, Magento developers have to use different extensions, which extract insightful data that boost the inventory management process. One such extension is the MageAnts Inventory Report for Magento 2.
Additionally, numerous businesses go for a point of sale (POS) system integrating inventory functionalities. This enables them to easily track inventory alterations and generate insightful reports, cutting down on manual work. Moreover, POS systems prove advantageous for managing multiple stores or warehouses simultaneously.
Types of Magento 2 Inventory Reports
The Magento 2 dashboard's 'Reports' tab usually shows five report types that offer valuable stock information, aiding in long-term strategic planning, avoiding stock-outs, and staying organized and consistent for your business.
Review Report
The Review Reports section presents a summary of product reviews, allowing you to filter results by customers or products. This section provides visibility into products that received customer reviews and furnishes a list of reviewing customers.
Sales Report
In the Sales segment, detailed information is available concerning orders, shipping, refunds, taxes, invoices, coupons, and payment method settlements.
Product Report
The Product reports section furnishes comprehensive insights into viewed and ordered products, bestsellers, low demand, and stock levels.
Customer Report
Within the Customer reports area, access is granted to customer activity data within specified time frames. This includes information on total orders, sales by country, total amount, order management, new account numbers, and customer counts across different product segments.
Marketing
Under the Marketing section, you gain insights into online shopping cart statuses, store website search terms, website traffic, conversion from different channels, and newsletter transmissions.
Understanding the Importance of Inventory Reports in Magento 2
Warehouse Management
Managing a warehouse involves overseeing its daily functions such as product delivery, placement, and selection. Effectively handling warehouses can significantly reduce time and labour for companies. Were you aware of the fact that nearly half of the overall picking time in a warehouse is consumed by travel?
On a positive note, an effective inventory report offers store managers a comprehensive view of stock movements. Leveraging this information, businesses can organize frequently demanded items in easily reachable areas, while relegating less sought-after products to remote sections. This strategic arrangement helps in conserving time and labour, resulting in quicker deliveries and heightened customer contentment.
Moreover, this supports the overall warehouse management system if everything is automated in the business, thus resulting in faster and more accurate order fulfilment; also helps in making seamless synchronization with other business systems like ERP and CRM.
Help In Determining Stock Demand
Effective inventory management offers advantages that reach further than merely monitoring stock levels. Within Magento reports, you can get insights into the frequency, and pace of items are selling within your store. This information assists in determining optimal restocking times and maintaining operational efficiency.
These reports enable businesses to anticipate forthcoming customer demand for particular items by scrutinizing sluggish-selling products. Predicting stock requirements aids in achieving equilibrium between supply and demand, which offers the flexibility to maintain a balanced approach to inventory management.
Besides this, suppose your reports are meticulously crafted without distortion in your prior sales data. In such cases, employing analytical tools will enable you to forecast future inventory performance, facilitating precise inventory updates.
Support Both Online & Offline Store
Every store owner wants to optimize their business performance with the accuracy of detailed data, where inventory reports helps with showcasing product performance and stock data on both online and offline store.
When businesses operate across multiple offline and online locations, inventory reports consolidate data to aid the performance of these various sites. Instances of disparities, like items being out of stock but still visible on the company's website, can occur between online and offline stores.
Hence, it's crucial for companies to comprehend their high-demand products and proactively allocate the appropriate quantity for each online and offline location. Valuable insights obtained through comprehensive inventory reports featuring filters based on products or locations smooth the path of this preparation.
Showcase Exact Figures
The report provides insights into your company’s sales performance, enabling you to monitor metrics such as order count, earned revenue, quantity of items sold, and average order value. This information help in determining a clear view of sales volume and overall value. Additionally, the report allows for monitoring alterations in orders, average order value fluctuations, and changes in the quantity of items sold.
Using the report, you can measure your company’s performance through critical indicators like average order value, order count, and quantity of items sold. This allows for a comprehensive understanding of your company's sales performance.
Assist With Marketing & Sales
Sales and marketing reports serve the purpose of preventing stock shortages of popular items. Through the analysis of sales data, businesses can assess the effectiveness of their marketing strategies. This enables them to pinpoint the most lucrative channels or promotions for focused marketing campaigns.
Additionally, sales reports provide crucial insights into customer preferences and behaviour. Utilizing this data, businesses can tailor their marketing communications and enhance the overall quality of the customer experience.
One more thing to keep note of here is that it also assists in avoiding targeting low-selling and low-demand products when it comes to marketing activities. For instance, if you have a women-worn clothing store, and you are selling many other items, including a jacket and fur coat, and you have no idea which one of them is getting more responses for your marketing campaigns, then, surely inaccuracy or lack of data will create problems in sales. Whereas a marketing report gives you all this data in one place.
Tips to Create the Best Inventory Reports for Your Magento Store
Filter The Data
Whenever you utilize an inventory report, many options will be given there on which you can use filters according to what data you want to derive. You can use filters for product ID, stock availability, out-of-stock, new quantity, quantity change, number of products ordered within a specified time frame, refunds for products, revenue generated and many more. Furthermore, filters make data extraction too quick, as you don’t have to go through tons of details and data.
Exporting In CSV File Format
CSV files contain plain texts that can be easily imported into any other storage database, with no regard to the software that you are using. Also, these files are created to facilitate smooth data export and import into other programs, with a human-readable data format. Plus, these files are extensively used in ecommerce to clear the way for product data to reach large numbers of clients.
View Credit Memo
A multitude of crucial details is encapsulated within a credit memo. Typically, these documents encompass the purchase order (PO) number alongside payment terms and billing specifics. Additionally, essential data such as the shipping address and itemized lists comprising prices, quantities, and the purchase date are integral components of a credit memo. So, this collective information aids sellers in inventory management, which is why keeping this in the inventory report is essential.
Recommended read:- Boosting Efficiency: Streamline Your Order Management With Magento 2 Order Archive
Wrapping Up
An essential rule that every online store owner must keep in mind is having a detailed inventory report to ensure that there won’t be any omissions, technical issues, out-of-stock or low availability of demanding items. Magento 2 inventory reporting becomes more and more purposeful if you are a medium-sized or large enterprise dealing in multiple products, as without valuable and insightful data, no business can survive in the long run.
Moreover, if you want to properly utilize inventory reporting, MageAnts can help you with this, as we offer Magento 2 inventory report extension, as well as help you integrate your preferred inventory report tool into your e-commerce store.
