Inventory Turnover Ratio: How to Calculate It and What Good Looks Like
Inventory turnover ratio is cost of goods sold divided by average inventory — how many times you sell and replace your stock in a year. This guide calculates it with a worked £ example, explains days inventory outstanding as the flip side, and shows why a single blended figure hides dead stock behind fast movers, plus what to actually do about a low or high number.
Economic Order Quantity (EOQ): The Formula, a Worked Example, and Its Limits
Economic order quantity is the order size that makes the total of your ordering costs and your holding costs as small as possible. This is the formula with every term explained, a worked example in £, how EOQ answers 'how much' while your reorder point answers 'when' — and, more usefully, the four assumptions that make textbook EOQ wrong for most small businesses and how to use it anyway.
Purchasing Requisition Software: What to Look For (and When You Need It)
A purchase requisition is a request to buy; a purchase order is the committed order that goes to the supplier. Purchasing requisition software runs the bit in between — request, approve, convert to a PO — and the best of it keeps going through receipt and invoice match. This guide covers the features that actually matter for a growing product business, the point where a spreadsheet stops being enough, and how an owned system builds the flow around how you already buy.
Output Control in Management: What It Is and How to Apply It
Output control is managing by measurable results rather than by supervising every step. This guide defines it, sets it against behaviour and input control, shows where it fits in operations — targets, KPIs, exception thresholds — and covers the trap that ruins it: measuring the wrong output. Then it looks at what it takes to make output control live rather than a monthly spreadsheet post-mortem.
ERP vs MIS: What Is the Difference (and Which Do You Need)?
ERP and MIS are not rivals — one runs the work and one reports on it. An ERP is the transaction system of record; an MIS is the management information layer that turns those transactions into decisions. This guide defines both plainly, sets them side by side, and explains why most growing businesses conflate them and end up with neither working properly — and what a right-sized owned operations system does instead.
2-Way vs 3-Way Matching: Which Should You Use?
2-way matching compares the purchase order and the invoice; 3-way matching adds the goods received note so the bill has to agree with what physically arrived. This guide gives you a side-by-side table, the one gap that decides between them — paying for goods you never received — and a plain framework for choosing, plus how an owned system runs the match automatically at receipt so nothing gets paid before it's verified.
Landed Cost vs FOB: What the Difference Costs You
FOB is the price on the supplier's invoice at the moment the goods cross the ship's rail. Landed cost is what that stock actually cost you once freight, insurance, duty and handling are added. Costing your imported lines at FOB quietly overstates margin on every one of them. This guide draws the line between the two with a full £ worked example.
How to Calculate Reorder Point in Excel (Formula + Free Template Logic)
The reorder point formula fits in a single Excel cell: average daily usage × lead time in days, plus safety stock. This is the exact build — which columns to lay out, the formula to type, a worked example with real numbers, and the honest limitation nobody puts in the tutorial: the spreadsheet cannot see your live stock, so the number is stale the moment usage moves.
What Is a Goods Issued Note (GIN)? Definition and Uses
A goods issued note is the record of stock leaving your business — issued to production, picked for dispatch, or drawn for internal use. This guide covers what goes on a GIN, how it differs from a GRN and a delivery note, and why untracked issues are the single biggest reason your stock figure never matches the shelf.