Salesman Inventory Management for Jewelry Wholesalers

3 minutes · WJewel jewelry software

The video version of our guide to salesman inventory management: what memo inventory on the road involves, the problems wholesalers run into, the eight things salesman inventory software should do, how the workflow runs in WJewel, and the best practices that keep memo from disappearing.

What the video covers

Pieces logged out, tied to a rep and a visit, priced and reconciled
Chain of custody, out-of-date line sheets, re-keyed orders and month-end surprises
Live line sheets, orders from the road, aging reports, commissions and offline mode
Allocate, sync, show and sell, reconcile and pay commission
Weekly reconciliation and pulling back stale memo

Chapters

0:00 The road is the risk
0:16 What salesman inventory management is
0:41 The challenges wholesalers face
1:05 What salesman inventory software should do
1:42 How it works in WJewel
2:04 Best practices
2:25 Contact us

Transcript

Read the full transcript

The road is the risk

For a jewelry wholesaler, the traveling salesman line is the lifeblood of the business, and the biggest source of inventory risk. Pieces go out on memo, cross state lines, get shown at trade shows, and hopefully come back.

What salesman inventory management is

Salesman inventory management tracks pieces from the vault, through every showing, and back. Pieces leave with a rep, get shown to retailers, and either return, sell or get exchanged. Each piece has to be logged out, tied to a rep and a customer visit, priced and reconciled, ideally in real time, from the road.

The challenges wholesalers face

Without the right system, wholesalers face the same problems: memo with no tight chain of custody, paper line sheets that are out of date at once, and no view of what a rep is showing, selling or has lost, orders taken on paper and re-keyed in the office, reconciliation only at month-end, and commissions worked out in spreadsheets.

What salesman inventory software should do

So the software should do eight things: memo out and in with signatures and timestamps, and a view of what each rep is carrying, right now, line sheets with live prices, photos and availability on a phone or tablet, and orders from the road that post straight to the office, visits tied to the memo and the order, and aging reports showing how long a piece has been out, and with whom, commissions based on the orders that actually closed, and an offline mode, because trade shows don't always have Wi-Fi.

How it works in WJewel

In WJewel, it's one flow: allocate pieces from the vault to a rep, and the rep's line sheet updates with images, specs and pricing, the rep logs visits, scans memo out and in, and takes orders on the spot, and every movement reconciles, with commission paid from the same system.

Best practices

And a few best practices: never let memo go out on paper, reconcile it weekly, not monthly, and tie every memo to a specific retailer and visit, use the aging report to pull back stale memo before it disappears, give reps live pricing, and insure memo inventory correctly.

Contact us

You'll find the full guide on the WJewel blog. WJewel is fully web-based, and runs on PCs, Macs, tablets and phones. To learn more, visit www.wjewel.com, or call us at (646) 578-8300.