We made it through another crazy holiday season! Although for some of us – just barely. Properly managing raw material purchasing and your inventory at the bakery during rush times can be seriously overwhelming, especially without the right tools. If you were feeling overwhelmed with your bakery inventory during this holiday season, maybe it’s time to implement more FlexiBake inventory functionality or look into switching to FlexiBake ERP.

Here are 4 key features most wholesale bakeries need:

Automating Purchases from Production

If you schedule production in advance or use a system like FlexiBake to easily forecast production requirements, then you should be able to automatically create purchase orders for your suppliers based on that information. Gone are the days of writing a list, creating a new PO, calling it in and then re-doing a bakery inventory count when you receive the materials.

In FlexiBake, click one button and all your raw materials required for production and below reorder level will be automatically generated. From there, you can easily check over and approve each PO before emailing them directly to your suppliers. When those materials are received through the receiving bay, your inventory count will be completely up-to-date. Click here to learn more.

Minimum stock levels

You probably have certain raw materials that are required for almost every one of your products. In that case you can store a minimum stock level that will activate a purchase order whenever that ingredient drops below your re-order level to ensure you never run out of those key raw materials. Avoid those costly production delays when your raw materials and product inventory is set up with minimum stock levels.

Mobile Bakery Inventory Counts

Using FlexiBake-on-the-Cloud you can take FlexiBake on a tablet to your storage rooms and coolers while doing a bakery inventory count. Forget writing everything onto a piece of paper and then transferring it into your ERP, or trying to figure out whether you wrote a 2 or a 7; just do a full bakery inventory count digitally all in one go.

Managing contract pricing

It’s easy to forget about contracts or forget to re-negotiate pricing when the information is stored on paper, in a filing cabinet, or in the corner of your storage room. Automate your contract pricing and stay up-to-date with requirements using an automated ERP system like FlexiBake. Set contract pricing for raw materials from each one of your suppliers for a specific period of time and/or a certain quantity ordered.

Purchasing raw materials and inventory control are two of the most important aspects of any bakery or manufacturing business. If you’re not efficiently managing your inventory and purchasing raw materials on time, you could be losing out on sales and wasting production time.

Contact us today to learn more about automating purchasing and controlling inventory.