Which Inventory Tags Are Important for a Business?

Inventory and stocks are as important to an organization as assets. Keeping a track on them and monitor their utilization is also a critical part of the business. Inventory items are tagged with inventory tags to get all required information centralized at one place, a cloud platform.

An organization acquires hundreds of assets for their daily operations. For the successful daily activities, tools and equipment get circulated from department to department and between different locations.

When there are many materials and items (assets and inventory) in an organization, there can be chances of misplacement, loss, or theft. To manage, monitor, and reduce such risks, the administrators track their assets and inventories.

The best suitable way to track inventory is to label them with unique identity stickers called barcodes. The inventory sticker system greatly helps with all information associated with inventory. Thus inventory tag is the best practice to implement and manage all the goods and items required and acquired by the company.

Inventory tags are stickers placed on equipment to make their identification process easier. These tags contain codes or identification numbers allotted to a particular item, its details, location, and related information.

Also Read: What are the Functionalities and Benefits of an Asset Tag?

These labels are scanned through a scanner to read the linked information to improve the visibility and security of assets and inventory. This makes it easy to monitor all associated items in the organization

What Are the Benefits of Using Inventory Tags?

Inventory sticker system enables in supervising all information from the purchase of an asset or inventory until its disposal.

Inventory tags are very helpful for the business. Organizations are using them to manage their key operations all around the world, such as:

A. Inventory Tracking

The inventory sticker system allows the organization to locate where the inventory is at a given time. The function of Inventory management puts in place a simple and less stressful cycling process of inventory, especially during audit times.

B. Inventory Counting

Inventory counting can be a hugely challenging task to be done manually i.e. counted by hands. This turns out to be a total waste of time, money, and skillsets. Therefore, inventory tags have opted and the technology adopted for all inventory counting to ensure total accuracy while utilizing less time.

C. Asset Management

The warehouse inventory makes up a sizable percentage of the organization's movable and fixed assets. Therefore, their count should be done through asset management software so as to track the inventory accurately. All necessary information can be accessed without having to stress about uncontrollable inventory.

D. Improved Visibility

Inventory tags allow the organization for end-to-end visibility. It provides real-time information on your current inventory to manage the related situation and supply-chain as well. You can know accurately about the stock situation when it needs to be refilled when to order purchases to avoid over or under stocking etc.

E. Seamless Reporting

The inventory management software provides seamless access to reports with the use of inventory tags in the system. The tags can be used to generate comprehensive reports before an audit occurs, thereby saving time and money.

Selection of Inventory Tags

The choice of inventory tags depends on the basis of the organization requirement. As every entity's operational sector and industry are different, so are their preferences and priorities to tailor inventory tags to their requirements.

Also Read: Barcode vs QR Code vs RFID vs NFC vs BLE vs GPS: Which One Is Better?

Here are some of the types of inventory tags to choose from along with their benefits:

1. Barcode Tags

Barcodes are 1-dimensional codes containing important information such as inventory identification, pricing, etc. readable through a barcode scanner.

Benefits:

• Accurate & Improved Inventory Management
• Fast and Efficient Operations
• Speed up the supply chain
• Increased Accountability

Why Are Barcodes Good?

Barcodes have a diverse range of inventory and assets to tag with low set-up costs.

2. QR Code Tags

QR codes are 2-dimensional codes with the capacity to be read through a mobile phone as well along with the scanner.

Benefits:

• Scanning possible by Smartphone
• Versatile
• Extremely Fast Scanning
• Good Fault Tolerance
• Stores large amount of Information
• Used for anything and everything

Why Are QR Codes Good?

QR Codes are highly mobile in nature and can be used on any platform.

3. RFID Tags

RFID tags capture and read data through radio waves to scan dozens of tags at a single time.

Benefits:

• Read Multiple Tags at a Time
• Tags can be integrated with sensors and GPS technology
• Improved Asset Security through real-time Alerts and Alarms
• Time spent over Inventory Information is reduced

Why Are RFID Tags Good?

RFID tags are good at warehouse management and retail operations as they are less time-consuming to operate.

Conclusion

As it is known, inventory labeling is not an easy task. At the same time, it is critical to implement and streamline inventory and asset tagging process for their efficient lifecycle management.

It is initially important to choose the type of tags and labels in accordance with the requirements of the organization and suitability to achieve the goals and objectives and ability to manage workflow smoothly.

Inventory tags help an organization with reduced costs, improved ROI, mitigated risks. All this proves to be beneficial at the end of the financial year.

Also Read: A Variety of Inventory Management Methods to Enhance Business

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is the purpose of tagging inventory?‍

Inventory constitutes a valuable business asset and they need to be tagged to make operations efficient and smooth.

2. What are the types of inventory?‍

1. Raw-material
2. Work-in-progress
3. Finished goods
4. Transit inventory
5. Buffer inventory
6. Anticipation inventory
7. Decoupling inventory
8. Cycle inventory
9. MRO goods inventory

3. What is meant by inventory?‍

Inventory is an accounting term for goods or equipment used in various stages of sale, such as finished goods, work-in-progress, raw materials.

4. What are inventory tags?‍

Inventory tags are adhesive labels affixed on the equipment and used for making the item's identification and processing easy.