To go along with our article that covers “Why Inventory Accuracy Matters in 2021“, I am going to go over 5 ways to reduce inventory waste in your Veterinary Practice. Inventory waste, expiration, and adjustments can have a significant impact on your Veterinary Practice. Every time an adjustment needs to be made, with the exception of an error in your practice management system, typically that means there was a loss of revenue
1. Monitor Expiration Dates
A major source of waste in many veterinary practices is expired products. Once a product expires you are hit with multiple expenses. You have lost the revenue from the sale of the products, you need to pay to dispose of the products and you need to buy new stock. Turbo Inventory PMS, helps you to get on top of this by shown you what products are about to expire, from here you are then able to see your stock holding and the average sales of the product. This allows you to make a judgement call to either return the product to the supplier or put it on offer. It also allows you to review if you need to stop buying the product as it isn’t a seller
2. Set up your software with groups, packages, etc.
Your practice management system (PMS) can be an incredibly helpful tool when it comes to accounting for inventory. Most PMS, like Turbo Inventory PMS, can be set up with packages or bundles to group codes together so when added to the medical history, the inventory items that were used or dispensed can be easily added. The best part of using this in Turbo Inventory PMS is that there are no missed charges, no doubling checking prescription or invoices to make sure everything was added and no missed medical history
3. Double check charge
Even with using groups, packages or other groups, it is still best to periodically check charges on Invoices. This can be every helpful especially when performing medical procedures at the clients farm or off premise. Some of the larger PMS systems (like Turbo Inventory PMS) offer an on the go app to allow you to take you practice on the road and create prescriptions and invoice as if you were still in the practice.
4. Count more frequently than once a year
One of the challenges of only counting once per year is that if you notice a huge difference between what’s on the shelf and what’s in your software, it becomes increasingly more difficult to find the source and investigate what might have happened.
Counting small amounts of your inventory throughout the year, called cycle counting, is an excellent way to counteract this. When counting smaller amounts throughout the year, it’s much easier to make a smaller course correction than a major overhaul.
5. Conduct chart audits
Conducting routine and regular chart audits can not only help identify any missed charges but can also point out and bring to the surface any patterns and trends. For example, it might bring to light that a standard operating procedure needs to be created for multiple-day hospitalizations. Or, maybe that there need to be better charging guidelines for dental blocks and sutures used during dental extractions.