Practice Management
Inventory Analysis
Next in a series of easy, quick management tips that you can implement in your practice today in less than an hour.
One of the basic linchpins of managing a small business is tracking income and
expenses. It is necessary to understand what goods and services are being inventoried
and sold in the optical boutique. Tracking frame purchases can be as simple as using
a one page form to track the number of frames by vendor, category and gender used
each month. A more useful and sophisticated method is to use the office software to
track this information by bar-coding each unit as it is put into inventory and scanned
out when it is sold to a patient. This will allow you to rebalance the inventory to match
the categories that reflect sales.
Inventory of revenue boxes of contact lenses should be similarly tracked. It is not a<
good use of capital to have several thousand dollars of product in odd powers and
slow moving brands sitting on the shelf. Periodically exchange the outliers for more
common powers long before they are close to expiration. Obviously, we are not
encouraging any returns of any product if possible and the best way to avoid returns
is buying accurately in the first place.
Analyzing the inventory allows future purchases to be made based on need, not on
personal relationships with specific representatives or biases of the staff member that
is charged with purchasing. If you have multiple locations, consider central purchasing,
like the large players in the industry do, to maximize discounts and minimize product
sitting on the shelf not moving.
Inventory a narrow band of products that are used commonly and can be purchased in
quantity for significant discounts and direct ship everything else from the wholesaler to
the patient without passing through the office at all.
Dr. Dubick prepares private practice appraisals, lectures and writes on many practice management issues. He may be reached at 818.843.2214 or email at dubick@studioeyes.com.
