Do you recognize these 5 hidden packaging costs? (And can you control them?)
Reusable (pooling) packaging has many advantages. Reusing crates, pallets, trolleys and containers over and over makes them durable and cost-effective. Yet there are costs that you do not immediately see, but that do affect your operating result. Do you recognize these hidden costs? Being aware, makes them easier to control.
It often happens: You do not know exactly how many packaging items you have in stock, how many you’re getting (returned) and exactly how many you need. The less insight, the trickier the planning. This often results in ‘over-renting’: to prevent under-stock, you rent more packaging than you need and keep too many items in stock. Your lack of insight thus makes your costs much higher than they should be.
Checking deposit settlements can turn out to be an impossible task. After all, which items have been sent to whom and who is responsible again? What has been returned and how many new items have you received? Which amounts need to be settled and with whom exactly? Confusion easily leads to automatic approval of deposit statements. You pay, without knowing if it's right. That will quickly cost you too much.
If you had all the data organized, data-driven packaging management would be an option. You would smartly anticipate to seasonal influences, never have too much packaging in stock and reduce your (hidden) costs through efficiency.
Often you do not keep track of exactly which packaging was supplied or taken by whom. That makes it hard to find out exactly who is responsible for damaged or missing packaging items. Your many different agreements between suppliers, buyers and carriers make this even more difficult. The handling of claims that arise as a result takes a lot of time and too often you end up unnecessarily paying the costs.
Somewhere you keep a list of items to be returned. This quantity of pallets has yet to be returned to that supplier, and these crates, containers or carts are still to be returned by customer X. Scheduling such shipments usually turns out to be surprisingly time-consuming and not always everything that should have been sent along is included. This not only increases the rental costs, but you also spend more on transport costs.
Do you have different lists for packaging registration, in Excel or on paper? And do you have to manually reconcile balance statements of pooling companies with your own balances? No doubt that alone will take too much time. Not to mention compiling overviews and management reports.
If it were easier to organize all packaging data, you could manage your packaging in a data-driven manner: smartly anticipate to seasonal influences, never keep too much packaging in stock and demonstrate that you have reduced the (hidden) costs by working efficiently.
The above hidden costs mainly arise from the inefficiency of many self-built packaging registration systems. You cannot store all data in a single system and as a result your costs turn out higher than anticipated. Now, there is a software solution that does store every single bit of your packaging data. Automatically matching balances, applying special arrangements, informing counterparties, settling deposits, handling damage claims, scheduling returns: it's all possible in PackControl.
Want to see for yourself how PackControl works? No problem. Make an appointment now for a free demo.