Hit the ground running in 2025 with Sage 200

As the new calendar year gets underway, it’s a great time to take stock at your business, making sure you’re set up to operate as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible in 2025.  

We wanted to share some best practice tips and tricks for how you can hit the ground running, decluttering your systems, optimising stock control, and fine-tuning stock levels to set the wheels in motion for the year to come.  

In this blog, we’ll be unpacking those key steps that you can take to refresh your use of Sage 200, using it to optimise your stock control and hit the ground running from the get-go. 

Out with the old, in with the new

Tidying up business records with Sage 200

To get things in motion for the year to come, our first best-practice step is to clear out your old, unnecessary business records. Sage 200 helps you manage your data more efficiently; it allows you to archive complete sales orders and purchase orders.  

By removing outdated records, your system can improve system speed and accuracy, ensuring that it can run smoothly without being cluttered by out-of-date information that isn’t adding any value.  

An action tip from us would be to schedule regular times to archive old orders throughout the year; if you’d like a complete run through on how to do this, there’s more information on how you can get in touch with us at the end of this blog. 

Getting on top of recent sales orders

A new year can bring new orders, and also the need to get on top of any that came in before closing for holidays. Things can get disorganised rather quickly, but archiving business orders once they’re completed can help de-clutter.  

The saying ‘prevention is better than cure’ springs to mind; by archiving completed orders as you go, you prevent them from cluttering your system. Through Sage 200’s automatic order tracking, it makes things much easier to see where everything is up to. 

Continue to declutter by optimising stock control 

The risks of redundant stock

There are a few risks to your business if redundant stock is lying around. From an operations point of view, it takes up valuable warehouse space and can increase the chance of error when managing stock. Financially, it can clog up cash flow, impacting business forecasting and skewing the data that’s used for any financial or operational decisions.  

With Sage 200, you can track stock levels in real-time, utilising its inventory management capabilities to identify redundant stock that you’ll want to manage at the start of the year.  

Our tip? By using stock reporting features, you can identify stock that hasn’t been sold, so you can then decide whether to remove or discount these items. What’s more, using this type of reporting as you go can help to prevent overstocking, thus freeing up that cash flow again and preventing future waste. 

Preventing the use of outdated stock 

If redundant stock isn’t managed quickly and efficiently, the accidental use of outdated stock can result in errors, delays and, ultimately, customer dissatisfaction.  

If you do find yourself managing some outdated stock, you can use Sage 200 to flag anything outdated, preventing distribution and logistics teams from mistakenly selecting old stock. This gives you time to manage your inventory while having peace of mind that whatever outdated stock you do find you have is at least flagged to other teams for avoidance. 

Remove outdated stock with Sage 200

You’ve investigated your inventory, you’ve flagged whatever outdated stock is still lying around – but what about removing outdated stock? Sage 200 offers tools to manage stock removals, so that financial records are more up to date. Stock records can be updated in real-time, so that while stock is being removed, the system remains accurate and there’s no loss of the track of stock movements.  

As a result, you’ll enjoy better financial accuracy and reporting for the current quarter and rest of the year. 

Fine-tune your stock levels for the year ahead

The importance of a stock re-count for the new year ahead

We find that it’s always best practice to perform a full stock count at the start of the year. It’ll allow you to get a head start, assessing the accuracy of your inventory and ensuring that records are up to date for the planning that is to follow. A stock re-count allows you to manage discrepancy, identify obsolete items and ensure that your stocks are accurately reflected in all financial records and forecasts.  

Start the new year with a complete real-time view of your stock, so you can start as you mean to go on. 

Use last year’s data trends to plan your new year

Through taking the time to interrogate your figures from last year, you can plan more effectively for the upcoming year. By utilising Sage 200’s reporting and analysis tools, you can identify patterns in sales and stock count, allowing you to make more informed decisions and thus preventing clutter as the year progresses.  

Some things to consider when interpreting the data are what stock was shifted well, which suppliers were the most reliable, what products were most popular and how did stock fluctuate month-by-month. You could even look at things like seasonal trends to help for planning for the new year. 

Get ahead, not catch up, with Sage 200 for your business

Picking up from where you left your stock in December and starting the year with a clear view of inventory will put you in good stead for the year ahead. By archiving those outdated records and managing redundant stock, you’ll have a clean slate for the year, leading to more efficient operations and more accurate reporting.  

As a result, you can expect to be much better prepared to tackle the challenges that come with a new year.