When distributors stock and manage consigned inventory at a customer’s site, the distributor becomes a key inventory lifeline for the customer. Of course, consignment inventory works best if it’s managed with technology that ensures the distributor is not stocking too much inventory, and that their customers are billed efficiently for what they do use. eTurns can help with these things and more.
Our mobile scanning app allows a distributor rep to do VMI inventory cycle counts on-site with TrackStock Replenish. Or, the distributor’s customer can do self-service CMI (customer-managed inventory) with TrackStock Manage or Manage Lite and scan items as they are used and pulled from inventory.
If VMI counts or CMI consumption scans cause item levels to fall below the minimum for any items, TrackStock will create a suggested order up to the maximum and send to the distributor’s ERP. Optional approvals from management can be set up. The Min/Max AI Dashboard helps distributors and their customers keep min/max levels and inventory levels optimized while avoiding stockouts.
TrackStock consolidates all the consigned inventory consumption transactions so you don't get a million single-item orders and have to send a million invoices. You have a choice to: 1) immediately send off the consumption transactions, 2) hold them until a later date by batching them, or 3) consolidate them and send them at a later date. This decreases PO and invoice costs.
Distributors benefit because our Min/Max AI Dashboard helps them optimize the consigned inventory at the customer's site, making it as inexpensive as possible to offer this differentiating service. And customers such as Graybar's M&L Electrical have increased the profitability of every job by being able to return any material they don't use for a job back to Graybar. eTurns makes usage tracking possible.
Distributors and their customers can both get visibility into on-hand inventory levels in their stockrooms, trucks, work stations and other point-of-use locations.
Read about best practices and common mistakes in managing consigned inventory