1. Material Handling Business Goals
Understanding your primary “inventory” problem
Confronting the human side of inventory
Do you even need JobTracker Inventory?
Ensuring materials get ordered for customers as needed
Technical Objectives
Understanding which tools solve which problems
What can be done with JobTracker Standard Edition
Tracking inventory with Excel
When to use JobTracker Inventory Edition
One challenge of talking about “inventory” is that it means different things to different people.
In this video, I’m going to talk about the various problems people mean when they talk about inventory and some of the tools used to address those problems.
I’m also going to talk about the way people interact with those tools and address one specific material handling problem that most customers have.

2. Inventory refers to several different things
Purchasing and receiving slabs (plus sinks, glue, blades, etc.)
Tracking which slabs go with which jobs
Accounting for the value of slabs purchased, on hand, and consumed
Managing photographs of slabs for programming digital equipment or sharing with customers (via your website, facebook, quotes, etc.)
Dealing with slab theft, slab breakage, and tracking errors
Dealing with remnants
What does “inventory” even mean?
Well, everyone needs to purchase and receive slabs – as well as sinks, glue, parts, etc.
Everyone needs to know which slabs go with which jobs
Slabs are expensive! You might have a million bucks worth of stone in your yard – would be handy to know how much it’s worth
There’s Visual inventory – Having pictures of your slabs for slabsmith or your website
Dealing with theft, breakage, and errors – this is the reason you reconcile – so that you know when problems have crept in, regardless of where the problems come from
And remnants – you might want to track remnants, or you might just let your customers pick through them.

3. No single tool JobTracker Standard Edition SlabSmith
CounterGo / phone / computer files
Accounting System (QuickBooks)
Excel
JobTracker Inventory Edition
JT IE Add-Ons from partners
JobTracker Standard Edition handles some core material handling problems pretty well – we’ll get to that shortly
Tools like SlabSmith handle visual inventory well.
CounterGo doesn’t handle inventory itself, but it’s in the mix. If you have pictures of slabs, you can show them on Step 5
I’ll cover these other tools 1 by 1 in a moment

4. The most important tool …
No software can solve a people problem!
Recipe for success (regardless of software or not):
Determine your process
Have the people in place to do it
Do it
If you don’t have a process, software makes it worse
Bad inventory is worse than no inventory
… but first, let me address the most important tool – people!
Software can’t solve a people problem!
Ultimately, you have to determine what you’re going to do, have people in place to do it, and then – very importantly – actually do it
If you don’t have a process, software makes it worse – bad inventory is worse than no inventory

5. How software can help Document the key steps in your process
Remember stuff
NOTE: Software doesn’t actually “do stuff” – people do!
People are the most important part of your process, but software does help.
Software gives you a place to record the key steps in your process, and it helps you remember key data
But remember, software doesn’t actually “do stuff” – people do – so you’re still going to have to outline your processes very clearly to your team.

6. JobTracker Standard Edition
Track special order status
Write the job # on the slab when it comes in
You don’t necessarily need JobTracker Inventory Edition to record those key steps in your process!
A lot of fabricators record Material and Color selections in some sort of Room Detail Form
For special orders, you can record whether you’ve ordered and received the material and then keep track of that with a view
Once you know that a specific slab is for a specific job, simply write the job # on it.

7. Excel
The “right” tool for recording a small amount of slab inventory (up to 300 full slabs or so)
Free Inventory Toolkit
Even if you use JT IE, some answers still require Excel
Excel is a great tool for keeping track of a small amount of inventory
It’s easy to start AND it’s easy to start over
If you’re currently not tracking inventory at all, we recommend using the spreadsheet that comes with our Free Inventory Toolkit

8. Time for JobTracker Inventory Edition
When the spreadsheet itself becomes unwieldy (> 300 full slabs)
When you have an employee dedicated to managing inventory
When the value of your remnants is greater than the cost of tracking them
You know it’s time for JT IE when the spreadsheet itself is an obstacle. We typically see customers noticing that when the reach about 300 slabs or so
If you have an employee dedicated to managing inventory? That’s probably another sign that you might benefit from JobTracker Inventory
And finally, it’s one thing to have a lot of remnants, but remember that there’s a cost to tracking them … Many fabricators simply put them out in the yard and have customers pick through them: “if you find a bargain, great” … that’s a great approach.
But you might reach a certain volume, and your remnants might be valuable enough that it’s worth the cost of tracking them. It’s one thing to have a remnant in the yard that would fit a small job. It’s quite another thing to find that remnant. JobTracker Inventory Edition can help you with that, but it’s not worth the effort for all fabricators.

9. Why track inventory?
Make sure customers get the slabs they want, the slabs they choose
Make sure you have enough core materials for ongoing jobs
Make sure you don’t accidentally assign slabs to multiple jobs
Make sure slabs don’t “walk away”
Make sure you get what you pay for
Help understand which products/colors are selling well
Extract value from remnants ?
Why track inventory at all? It’s a question worth asking.
Some fabricators don’t do it – so why do you?
I’ve thrown out some ideas here – any resonate or not? Am I missing anything?
There’s a cost to tracking any kind of inventory. Don’t assume that cost is worth it – at least raise the question: “Why?”

10. JT IE helps you solve 3 problems
Create purchase orders and receive material into the system
Track which slabs go with which jobs
Add leftover pieces back into the system as remnants
People processes still matter most: “This is how we do it”
In summary, JobTracker Inventory Edition is pretty good at solving these 3 problems: (read bullets)

11. Quick JT IE demo
5 min
Let me do the 5 min version of how JT IE works …