Industry conferences, trade shows, weddings, parties—the event management industry is set to grow to a whopping $2 trillion by 2032. But capitalizing on that growth is no easy task unless you have an event inventory management software for your business.

Event planning or management companies face many challenges, such as budgeting, client communications, forgotten details, failed equipment, etc. These are pretty common, and they can mean substantial losses for the business. And if you don’t take measures to minimize losses, you’ll have trouble maintaining healthy profits for long-term growth and success.

In this guide, we’ll help you understand how event inventory management software fits into your profit equation. Keep reading to understand how event inventory management software can benefit your event management and planning processes while increasing your profits.

What Is Event Inventory Management Software?

Event inventory management software includes mobile or web applications and other tools that help businesses streamline the task of managing items for events. These software solutions help you manage your assets using automation, integrations, and other features. You can use it to keep track of inventory movement, increase accountability for individual items, prevent low stock levels, organize products for maximum returns, create reports for budgets, etc.

Are you struggling to deliver on your promises to clients? Do you report a significant loss of inventory after every event? Do you often not know where your inventory is at a given time? Are you accounting for more errors and losses than profits from your events?

You might be in need of event inventory management software!

Features and Benefits of Event Inventory Management Software

The global inventory management software market, valued at $1.53 billion in 2021, is set to reach a valuation of $2.56 billion by 2029. This means more and more businesses are implementing these solutions to improve their operational efficiency.

Here are some features and benefits these businesses are enjoying post-software implementation:

1.     Check-In/Check-Out Using Tags

Managing live inventory is a constant challenge management companies face when planning and organizing an event. The task is often manually carried out using spreadsheets, leading to inefficient tracking and losses.

Check-in/check-out features that track the items going in and out of storage can easily solve this problem. You can put identification tags on all your assets, and your team can simply scan them every time it is moved from one area to another (e.g., storage to transport, transport to venue, etc.).

This enables you to see where each item is at all times and who is accountable for it. You can also track your inventory’s location and see when it is due to return to storage.

The most important benefit of this feature is that it allows you to save on expenses due to lost inventory. Furthermore, it saves you a lot of time you’d have spent logging each item and looking for them within a manual tracking system.

Barcodes, QR codes, RFID tags—there are many ways you can track your inventory items within your management system software.

2.     Improves Inventory Accuracy

Software-based solutions integrate seamlessly with scanning equipment, point-of-sale tools, and other systems to improve the accuracy of your inventory data. You will know precisely how many items you have on hand, how much you’re selling, how much you need to restock, and when.

Thanks to these integrations, your system will ensure there are no double bookings or shortages. If there is a conflict in your orders or bookings, the system will notify you immediately to prevent confusion and losses.

According to studies, simple stockouts can result in losses worth $456.3 billion annually. So, it’s good news if your business can cut down on this with the help of software technologies.

3.     Multi-Location Inventory

In event management, assets can be scattered in multiple locations or in transit. As a result, your team might have difficulty tracking everything manually, especially if you’re a small business with limited staff.

Event inventory management software can help your team scan and track event assets over multiple locations. These solutions automate critical tasks in the process, such as scheduling pick-ups, receiving items, packing for transit, and more. You can easily stay on top of your inventory management no matter how many events you book within a certain period.

4.     Simplifies Locating Asset Insurance Records

Event inventory often involves heavy, expensive machinery that is expensive to purchase and maintain. And one of the few unpredictable things that can happen during such events is damage to equipment.

Despite taking all the precautions, you might not be able to prevent it from happening. In such a situation, event inventory management software can help simplify the insurance claim filing process for you. The software system stores all information about the equipment and keeps it updated as well. That way, you can have all the information at hand if you need to file a claim.

5.     Generates Reports for Better Insights

Experienced event managers know they should account for potential obstacles that may crop up unexpectedly before or during an event. While you cannot avoid these incidents altogether, you can surely learn from your mistakes when you have event inventory management software.

These systems use data fed to them and gather insights from certain patterns. These analytics can help you better understand such occurrences and how you can reduce your losses in similar situations in the future.

But that’s not all that these reports can help you with!

They can ensure you can improve item allocations and budgets for recurring events, preventing over- and under-budgeting while maintaining sufficient cash flow to cover all expenses. You can also use data to better organize your event inventory and ensure all your facilities and operations function optimally.

You can look at the insights to determine which items are most in demand and which aren’t. This data can then prove helpful when making investment decisions, ordering more inventory, marketing your products, and more.

Do you spend a lot of time and money on equipment repairs due to unexpected breakdowns? These reports can help you get to the bottom of the issue. Data analytics and insights can prove helpful in many ways. However, their main application is in figuring out the major problems leading to losses so you can resolve them and minimize risks moving forward.

6.     Ensures Up-to-Date Maintenance of Equipment

Tools and equipment need timely upgrades and repairs to ensure they function smoothly during events. And unless you’re tracking their maintenance using software, you’ll have a hard time keeping up with their repair schedules.

Software solutions can help you streamline maintenance scheduling for dozens or even hundreds of pieces of equipment. You don’t have to depend on an employee’s memory or a haphazard spreadsheet to schedule regular maintenance for assets that need it.

Simply get timely alerts with event inventory management software. This will save you from equipment failure during events and reduce losses incurred due to expensive repairs.

The system also saves data from previous repairs and maintenance schedules. So, the technician knows exactly what to check and look for, thereby saving tons of time and effort.

7.     Boosts Productivity

Event inventory management software features can provide a significant boost to your team’s productivity.

Asset tracking features ensure your team knows where every piece of inventory is, so they can schedule tasks only when relevant items become available. This maximizes efficiency in your operations and minimizes downtime and wasted hours.

8.     Return on Investment (ROI)

Your business’ ROI automatically increases when you don’t have to spend too much money on equipment losses, repair/maintenance downtime, staff overtime, etc.

Further increase your ROI by making the most of data insights. For example, patterns from previous events can help you make better decisions in terms of budget and inventory management. With a bit of work, more capital can become available for generating bigger profits.

Features to Look for in Asset Tracking Software for the Events Industry

Before setting up event inventory management software for your business, you must choose suitable features for your needs. To help you, we’ve narrowed down some must-have elements of such software solutions:

Integrations

Most event inventory management software solutions include integration support for various accounting systems, POS, etc. You should choose one that provides maximum integrations and support for systems you already use in your regular operations.

Scalability

Your software solutions should be able to support your inventory size even as your operations expand. Many providers only offer a single pricing plan that supports extensive inventories. While small businesses can use these solutions, paying high amounts for limited items doesn’t make sense.

Make sure you pick a provider that offers different plans for businesses with small and large collections. Better yet, look for one that offers scalable plans.

Usability

The better the user interface, the easier it will be for your team to get used to software implementation. Choose software that your team can set up and learn quickly to minimize downtime.

Mobile Device Adaptability

Event inventory management software you can use on mobile devices will further streamline your operations. This means your team members can move freely across locations and maintain access to inventory data at all times.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is inventory in event management?

Inventory in event management can refer to A/V equipment, lighting kits, tables, chairs, or other items used by organizers and attendees.

What is inventory management in event management?

For easy inventory management within an event management project, you should deal with inventory-related storage, maintenance, organization, purchasing, utilization reporting, and more such tasks.

What’s the importance of managing inventory in a venue?

Inventory management in each venue can help an event management business keep track of its assets and their condition. It can help managers and employees be accountable for said inventory and minimize losses and damage.

Conclusion

Keeping your inventory under control, improving client relations, reducing expenses, avoiding losses—event inventory management software does a lot of heavy lifting. And thanks to it, your team can carry out their event management-related tasks more efficiently.

No matter which asset you’re looking after for your event management business, you can do your job much better with robust event inventory management software.

While most solutions come packed with various features, they may be too expensive to consider or cannot scale up or down based on your business needs. With Nest Egg, we’ve included the most purposeful features for businesses of all sizes and shapes. The pricing is affordable, and there are various plans for your scalability needs.

We also provide world-class support to help you troubleshoot emerging issues.

Interested in learning what Nest Egg plan will suit your needs best? Get in touch today!