How To Organize Product Accounting In An Online Store

Products, like money, love to be counted. If you want to be a businessman, then learn to count. Proper accounting allows you not only to pay bills and make a profit, but also to predict demand for product items and scale your business. Magento development company specialists tell you how to take everything into account and not mix anything up in an online store – from the simplest options to advanced systems.

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Organization Of Accounting: A Short Educational Program For Beginners

Online trading is a cyclical and continuous process. Therefore, accounting must be carried out constantly and without lunch breaks.

Its main stages:

Receiving the product and its acceptance – counting, checking, if necessary, returning to the supplier.
Storage of goods is carried out in compliance with the rules and deadlines.
Inventory tracking – control over the quantity of goods in the warehouse.
Transaction accounting – sale to the buyer, transfer of stocks to production, movement between warehouses, writing off part of the goods for business needs, return to suppliers.

How To Organize Accounting: Manually Or With The Help Of Software Products

For effective management of an online store, it is important to use a system that will allow you to track every movement of goods – from receipt at the warehouse to sale or write-off.

Historical option

The manual method is a classic option, in which all operations with goods are recorded in notebooks or special journals. All actions with the goods are recorded: from receipt at the warehouse to disposal. Its advantages:

minimal costs;

ease of learning;
flexibility;
autonomy and full control by the owner.

This approach is used by small businesses at the start of their activities. With a large assortment and frequent operations, it becomes too labor-intensive, the risk of errors increases.

Google Sheets and Excel

Using Excel or Google Sheets is modern, inexpensive, and visual. The tools allow you to automate many processes, work together in one document.

Pros of the method:

software availability;
automation of calculations;
flexibility;
access from any device.

Cons are almost identical to manual calculations. These are errors – especially with a large assortment of items, limited automation capabilities and the inability to connect the software to the online store.

Specialized programs

Accounting with the use of specialized software improves the process of inventory management in an online store. Their advantages:

automation of transactions;
integration with other software;
analytics – quickly and for each item;
facilitation of inventory.

Accounting and warehouse accounting programs differ in the set of functions and capabilities. Often, such systems combine the capabilities of CRM and ERP.