Why UnitWise? Let's Talk Tracking Your Inventory

Products in your inventory are used for more reasons than just selling to your customers. You use products for demos, donations, personal use, gifts, etc. but how are you tracking those products as they leave your inventory? UnitWise.com has a special tracking feature just for this situation. It is very important to track your inventory when it is used for:

Demo Products
Demo products are the Section 1 products that you would use for your skin care classes and appointments. This does not include Section 2 samples. Double check with your accountant, since this may be considered a Business Expense.

Personal Use
Love MK products? Most likely you are the biggest fan and your bathroom vanity is covered (unless you use the Roll-Up bag) with MK products. When you remove these products from your inventory you want to properly document them, so your on-hand product count is always correct.

Gifts/Giveaways
Did you have an awesome party and want to reward your great hostess with an actual gifted product? You can keep track of that too. This may also be a business expense. This does not include Gifts with Purchase products.

Charities/Donation
If you had a great time visiting a charity organization and donated a portion of your inventory to a good cause, be sure to record that when you get home in UnitWise.

Expired Products
MK continuously updates and improves its product lines, it is important to adhere to the expiration date guidelines to offer best quality products to your customers, these products should be properly discarded, but also recorded in UnitWise to be removed from your inventory.

Here’s a peek at how it all works:
1.) Create a customer: Customers>Customer Center>Add New>Customer>Add Customer Name, Personal Use for example> Save. You can create as many customers like that as needed to give you more detailed tracking. Consult with your tax professional first. In some areas items that are used as personal use can be considered a business expense as long as they are visible to the eye (Mascara, eye shadow, lipstick) so you may be advised to track visible and invisible products (moisturizer, sunscreen) separately from visible once.

2.) Open this new customer profile, go to “Other Info” tab and add a “Default Discount” 50% and choose custom tax rate to be zero. In this blog we mention 50% discount in a sense that you would be tracking your wholesale cost, however your tax professional may have a different opinion.

3.) You can create an invoice for any product removed from the shelf at the specified discount, and no tax. No need to post a payment to this invoice, since it is there for tracking purposes only. It is best to create individual invoices for products as you remove them from your inventory vs. maintaining same invoice and just updating it all year long. That way you can show the exact date when that product was removed, if need arises.

4.) Anytime you need to see the total cost of products removed from your inventory, you may use the Sales Breakdown report: Home>Reports>Sales>Sales Breakdown>Choose Time Period>Run Report.

5.) At tax time, Sales Breakdown report for the calendar year include both your customer sales and your personal use/demo/charities products, so be sure to let your tax professional know about that. Also provide him/her with the individual report for each tracking customer (Personal Use, Demo, Charities, Gifts, etc.)

UnitWise makes it easy to keep track of all your inventory. For more information on how UnitWise can help you succeed contact one of our Support Heroes Today via phone: 704.234.6006 or email: heroes@unitwise.com