Keep Track Of Goods With An Inventory Checklist

What Is an Inventory Checklist?

An inventory checklist is used by companies to record the stocks of goods, merchandise, land, or building materials. In this way, you can keep a comprehensive overview of all kinds of purchases. Accountants use it to check whether the inventory list of deliveries and purchases corresponds to the actual number of available products.

Keeping an inventory checklist helps you to evaluate the working capital and determine whether the stocks are sufficient enough to meet the company’s delivery needs as well as avoid overproduction, product spoilage, or insufficient deliveries.

This article deals with the following topics:

1. Meaning of the inventory checklist

2. 5 types of inventory categories

3. The importance of an inventory list template

4. A digital solution for inventory checklists

What Does an Inventory Template Mean?

You should use a toolbox inventory spreadsheet to manage your products and services sustainably and to optimize your billing. If you want to create such a checklist, you should add all relevant properties of an item to the inventory list. Since usually several employees do the inventory, it will be best to come up with standardized way of doing things.

In the following, the components of an inventory checklist are named:

1. Position or item number




2. Location

• Warehouse
• Shelf
• Office



3. Model

• Identification number
• Description
• Remarks on properties: weight, appearance



4. Purchase information

• Purchase price
• Bought on
• Bought at



5. Current estimated value

• Wear
• Traces of use



6. Guaranteed

• Guarantee until



7. Maintenance information

• Maintenance notes (to be cleaned, disposed of)
• Date of last maintenance
• Time until next maintenance

What are the 5 Different Types of Inventory Categories?

1. Raw Materials

Raw materials are components or items used to produce finished products. They can be produced by the manufacturer or sourced from a supplier. For example, a business that makes t-shirts will need print designs, fabric, and thread as raw materials for manufacturing their products. If you are in the food service business, you can take advantage of a food inventory checklist template.

2. Work in Progress

Work-in-progress (WIP) inventory refers to the unfinished items or components currently in production, but not yet ready to be sold. This type of inventory is seen in retailers that manufacture their own products. For example, a furniture business may have tables that have been put together but are still waiting to be painted.

3. Finished Goods

Finished goods are items that are complete and are ready for selling. These items may either be manufactured by the company or purchased from a supplier. If you are a retailer, you most probably purchase items from a supplier at a special wholesale price or maybe you have products customized for you by your supplier.

In the retail industry, it is useful to group finished goods into a few other types in your process inventory template. This allows your business to improve allocation and management.

• Allocated – These are the goods that have already been purchased by a customer and allocated to a sales order (SO). They are not available for sale anymore and must, therefore, be removed from the ready-for-sale inventory.
• In-transit - This is unsold inventory that is presently in transit, such as a purchase order on the way to your facility or stocks being transferred to another warehouse.
• Ready for sale – These are the goods that have been produced or purchased and then stored in the warehouse to be sold to customers. It is also called available inventory and must be consistent with the numbers in your warehouse stock audit.
• Safety - This is inventory that acts as a buffer cushion in case of any unexpected surge in demand or issues with suppliers.
• Seasonal – These are goods that are purchased or manufactured specifically to fulfill an anticipated surge in demand. Hence, they are also called anticipation stock. Seasonal stocks are often prepared to cover peak season or promotions, like Black Friday sales.

4. Maintenance, Repair, & Operations (MRO) Goods

MRO goods are items used throughout the manufacturing process but are not part of the final product.

MRO goods include:

• Batteries
• Cleaning supplies
• Computer systems
• Machinery
• Production and repair tools
• Uniforms and personal protective equipment
• All items used up or discarded during the manufacturing process

Some of these goods may seem small but MRO is inventory purchased from a supplier that is stored somewhere and must be included in financial records.

5. Packaging materials

Packaging materials are anything you use for packing and keeping your products safe while in storage or while shipping to your customers. Packaging materials may include:

• Boxes
• Bubble wraps
• Chipboard packaging
• Foil sealed bags
• Padding
• Polybags
• Stretch film

Many businesses don’t give enough importance to their packaging materials when managing and controlling their inventory. However, packaging items are used regularly. They must, therefore, be properly maintained and included in your inventory checklist and your accounting.

Why are Inventory Checklists so Important in Inventory Management?

An inventory checklist is a vital part of your company's inventory management. An efficient inventory management system is crucial to keeping your business profitable, productive, and organized. By definition, inventory management is the process of ordering, stocking, storing, and selling your inventory.

The main goal of keeping proper inventory management is to ensure your business can easily and efficiently manage the ordering, stocking, storing, and using of inventory. Effective inventory management guarantees that you are updated about what items are in stock, how many of each item you have, and where you stored those items.

Powerful inventory management allows you to find out how you use your inventory and understand shifts in demand. You can focus your time and efforts on exactly what you need and eliminate what’s not so important. This measure helps you avoid wasting your resources.

Inventory forms, therefore, are necessary for practicing inventory control. It is a way of ensuring you always have enough stock on hand to meet demand, while at the same time, reducing costs on ordering and carrying inventory.

Advantages of using a digital inventory checklist

With the help of a digital app, you can easily perform an inventory check when receiving shipments, preparing goods for sale, and replenishing inventory. Lumiform is a digital solution for checklists, inspection, and audits that replace mountains of paper inventory forms. Easily record item quantity and total cost digitally. Benefit from the advantages of a digital application for your inventory checklists:

• Generate real-time data from any inventory check. This makes quality and security measurable, and you can use the data to continuously optimize your inventory processes.
• Get an overview of everything that's going on during an inventory check.
• Inventory reports are created automatically after using an inventory checklist - this saves you time on postprocessing.
• Increase the efficiency of your internal inventory processes. Through more efficient communication within the team, third parties, and management, as well as faster reporting, you can solve incidents up to 4x faster than ever before.
• Save time by analyzing all data from Lumiform’s free inventory templates. Identify areas in your inventory process that need your attention more quickly.
• The very simple operation of the inventory checklists offers no room for error. The app minimizes the effort involved in documenting or completing an inventory report template as opposed to tedious paper or Excel lists.
• Depending on the size of the inventory, the tests can be carried out about 30-50% faster.