It’s no easy task to manage a retail store. No matter the size of the business or its industry, store managers face many challenges, such as pleasing customers, creating strong teams, maintaining product levels, and identifying items that aren’t selling as well as others. Managing all of these variables requires a robust set of skills, as well as a working knowledge of software applications such as Excel, which can help to streamline many of these tedious, time-consuming tasks.
How Can Excel be Used for Retail Management?
Microsoft Excel’s worksheets are a great resource for tracking and managing inventory. This application is useful for helping Retail Managers know what they currently have, as well as what they still need. Using Excel to manage inventory offers a streamlined approach by which users can organize, tag, and label items so that all team members working with a worksheet or workbook have access to the same numbers.
Using Excel spreadsheets to manage inventory provides a comprehensive list of the various aspects that must be managed, such as:
- How much inventory is currently available onsite
- When it’s time to order more inventory
- Where inventory should be ordered
Here are just a few of the ways Excel can be a powerful tool for retail management:
- Knowing the actual numbers helps Retail Managers avoid having to guess or approximate inventory. It’s essential for accurate budgeting.
- After periodically counting inventory, Retail Managers can then update the spreadsheet to reflect the current numbers. Doing so can flag any waste, theft, or product spillage.
- Using Excel to manage inventory may not fully replace work order systems or computerized maintenance management systems, but it provides an effective, accessible, low-cost (or no cost for Microsoft 365 subscribers) solution to many of the most pressing retail management concerns.
- If you are looking to organize product inventory and reduce the time it takes to locate, add, and edit data in Excel, several helpful shortcuts are available that can help find and combine data, as well as indicate conclusions based on analysis. The following are several helpful formulas for managing retail in Excel:
- SUMPRODUCT is a rudimentary function that can add, subtract, divide, or multiply any product from a range. It’s helpful for calculating shipment averages, as well as returns. It can also be used to find the average sales price by profit margin or product.
- INCOMING STOCK has applications for managing the number of units of each product that arrives for inventory. This formula also ensures that there won’t be differences between the numbers coming in from sales channels and actual inventory.
- OUTGOING STOCK helps Retail Managers monitor the quantity of stock that’s being shipped and sold in order to avoid overselling.
- STOCK LEVEL is useful for keeping track of the current amount of each stock based on its product type.
- FIND / LOOKUP are two fundamental, yet useful, formulas that help those working in retail sift through inventory on an Excel worksheet. The FIND function can locate and isolate specific data, and the LOOKUP function can execute a wider data search.
- RANK provides insights into how a range of values ranks, in either ascending or descending order. This provides a way to see which products are selling the best and may need to be re-ordered, as well as flag those that are underselling.
- AVERAGEIF performs similarly to the RANK formula but can find the average of cells that meet certain criteria.
- DAYS has applications for calculating the number of days occurring between the dates listed in cells. This formula can be used to shed insights into a product’s lifecycle, as well as calculate how many days pass between stock orders.
- LEN offers information about how many text characters are in a cell. This is a helpful shortcut in situations when it’s essential to identify various kinds of product codes based on their length.
Retail Management Templates in Excel
Free templates for managing inventory in Excel are available from several outlets. Microsoft also offers its own template; to access it, just click on the file you’re working with, then “New,” and you can perform a search for “inventory” templates. An additional free template for stock and inventory management is available from Zervant. This UK-based invoicing company offers a three-page, easy-to-use template on its blog. The workbook includes options for stock database tables, stock inventory, and daily stocktake, among others. This template also includes clear instructions for use.
In addition, a variety of Excel templates are available for purchase as well. Excel templates such as the Retail Business Manager Pro were created specifically to help those who work in retail manage sales and inventory. This template can support multiple warehouses and helps users keep track of each product’s inventory level, as well as which ones should be re-stocked. It also provides a way to quickly create invoices, as well as save them as PDFs or print them. Templates such as this provide a quick snapshot of the patterns of sales and purchases over time, and can also help Retail Managers see the products that are performing the best.
Another Excel template for managing retail is available from Sheetgo. This automated system is made up of three connected files in Excel that allow data to automatically travel back and forth from check-in, check-out, and spreadsheets managing inventory. This template offers an up-to-date dashboard with an overview of stock levels. It makes it easy to confirm which goods are sold out, as well as which are currently available.
Get Started Learning Excel with Hands-On Classes
A great way to learn more about how to use Microsoft Excel is to enroll in one of Noble Desktop’s Excel courses in NYC and live online. Courses are available for those who are new to Excel, as well as learners who regularly work with this spreadsheet application and wish to brush up on their skills. In addition, there are also in-person and live online Excel courses available through Noble Desktop or one of its affiliate schools. A variety of course options are offered, ranging in duration from three hours to two days and costing between $229 and $1,099.
Noble Desktop’s Excel Bootcamp provides a great option for those who want to master core Excel concepts, such as working with VLOOKUP and PivotTables, as well as performing What-If Analysis. Students who enroll in this rigorous, 21-hour course can elect to study in person in Manhattan or learn in the live online environment. This small class comes with the option of a free retake and covers a variety of Excel concepts applicable to the business world.
Those interested in studying close to home can also browse over 400 in-person Microsoft Office classes in a city near you to find local Excel study options.