Optimize your inventory management with serial number tracking
Managing inventory without serial numbers is like looking for treasure without a map. Serial number tracking gives you a clear and organized system for tracking and tracing stock — helping you eliminate bottlenecks, maintain accurate records, and meet quality standards.
Unlock the full potential of your inventory
Manual inventory checks work best when there’s only a few items to track. As inventory volumes increase, so do the errors — and the need for automation becomes more apparent with each new order. You can streamline stock operations and automate processes across the supply chain with serial number tracking software to trace and count inventory for you.
Track your stock
Attach serial numbers to your inventory and monitor items from production to sales. Start using a serial tracker and gain better visibility into your stock levels, improve supply chain management, and enhance customer service.
Katana can help you with:
- Improving inventory accuracy — Make data-driven decisions about when to order more products, which products to prioritize, and which to stop selling
- Better supply chain management — Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, improve communication with suppliers and customers, and ensure timely delivery of products
- Enhancing customer service — Identify individual products and track their historical movements faster, resolve issues easier and provide high-quality customer service
End-to-end traceability
Katana’s serial number tracker software helps businesses achieve end-to-end traceability and improve inventory operations, such as quality control, waste management, and overall productivity.
Katana provides you with the tools to:
- Improve quality control — Track individual products throughout the entire production process to identify quality issues and improve overall product quality
- Reduce waste — Ensure that you have the right amount of products on hand at all times to reduce waste and minimize the risk of stockouts and overstocking
- Enhance operational efficiency — Optimize your operations and improve overall efficiency to reduce lead times, improve cycle time, and improve customer satisfaction
Integrate other tools
Katana has partnered up with other platforms to offer an all-in-one manufacturing experience. From accounting to sales to delivery — build a custom workspace to meet the needs of your business.
Katana offers integrations to take care of:
- Accounting — Get on top of your bookkeeping with tools like QuickBooks Online and Xero
- E-commerce — Automate your sales flows with WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Shopify
- And even more tools — Create your own integrations using Katana’s open API
Streamline your manufacturing with integrations
Build a workspace that fulfills all the needs of your business
Aside from serial number tracking and inventory management, there are more business responsibilities that need your attention. That is why Katana offers integrations with several platforms to simplify your operations and cover all angles of your manufacturing. From accounting to sales, shipping to automation — Katana has you covered. If you’re already using tools that you want to keep benefiting from, you can integrate them into your workflow using Katana’s open API.
Katana provides us with all the necessary features for manufacturing order management. Furthermore, we can track inventory usage and incorporate our sales order tacking into Katana.”
Mikhail Moore
CEO at Vitacore Industries
Having a system track inventory and what stage it is in has been incredibly helpful. It also has helped our team have a more clear delineation of the order of operations for each product in our catalog.”
Sarah Zinger
Director of Production Logistics at System76
In Katana, we can more effectively see and follow inventory levels, and have recipes and BOM for our manufactured products that let us follow the manufacturing status throughout the whole production cycle.”
Richie Duncan
Founder of KODAMA
Besides improving day-to-day operations and inventory management for our raw materials and finished goods, Katana has also helped us decrease our lead production time by 35% through improved order production and sourcing planning.”
Jérôme Bacquias
Founder of Paper Republic
Serial number tracking FAQ
Serial numbers are identifiers assigned to individual products to distinguish them from all other items. They consist of a combination of letters and numbers to distinguish one object from another. Each serial number is one of a kind, meaning that no two items will have the same number.
Let’s take, for example, a new laptop. When you receive the laptop, you’ll notice a small sticker on the device containing a combination of letters and numbers. This is the serial number. It is unique to your device and helps identify it in case of warranty claims, repairs, or theft.
In manufacturing, serial numbers are assigned to products during the production process and help track them through the supply chain. In the case of recalls or quality control processes, serial tracking helps trace back to the beginning of the production run and minimize potential quality issues.
Serial number tracking is the process of assigning serial numbers to your inventory as a way to keep an accurate count of it and its journey across the supply chain. It helps businesses with keeping track of their products throughout their entire lifecycle and providing valuable insights into:
- Product performance
- Customer preferences
- Inventory management
With serial number tracking, businesses can identify and trace products through their supply chain, monitor quality control and recall processes, and optimize inventory management strategies. This helps reduce the risk of stockouts, minimize waste and spoilage, and improve their overall efficiency and profitability.
Generating serial numbers can be done manually or through automated systems.
The most common method is through automated software or tools that generate unique, random serial numbers. These tools allow businesses to easily create and assign serial numbers to their products, making it easier to track and manage their inventory.
To generate serial numbers manually, a business can use letters and numbers to create a unique sequence for each item.
Most commonly, serial numbers are a combination of:
- Product name
- Production date
- Warehouse code (applies to multilocation businesses)
- A sequential number to confirm the validity of the code
However, this method can be time-consuming and prone to errors, especially if handling large volumes of inventory.
On the other hand, automated systems and software can generate thousands of unique serial numbers in a matter of seconds.
These systems use algorithms to create random sequences of letters and numbers individual to each item. This makes it easier for businesses to track and manage their inventory, as they can quickly identify each item based on its unique serial number.
Additionally, automated systems can be integrated with other software tools, such as inventory management systems, to streamline processes and improve efficiency.
If you wish to read about how to create stock-keeping units (SKUs) with Excel and download a free generator, check out this article.
Serial number software provides a system for tracing your inventory by assigning unique serial numbers to each individual product. Businesses opt for software instead of manual tracking because of the efficiency and automation that online platforms offer.
Katana’s cloud inventory software offers multiple features to simplify your serial number tracking processes and improve inventory management throughout the supply chain.
End-to-end traceability
Katana allows you to add serial numbers to the products from the manufacturing stage and track the goods until they’re shipped to retailers or customers. This will come in handy for warranty cases, after-sales service, returns, or even recalls.
Serial number search
Katana includes a search function that allows manufacturers to quickly find individual products based on their serial numbers, making it easy to identify specific products and track their movements.
Shop Floor App
Katana gives you complete shop floor control and allows your operators to view tasks and mark them as complete using only a smart device. Once an assignment has been done, it will automatically trigger a change of the status in Katana, too.
Quality control tracking
With serial number tracking, Katana users can easily trace a defective product back to its original batch and find all potentially affected items.
Get visibility over your sales and stock
Wave goodbye to uncertainty by using Katana Cloud Inventory for total inventory control
