What Is a SharePoint Inventory List, and How Do I Make One?

One of the quickest and easiest methods to handle inventory is to use a strong and effective tool. All you need is to choose wisely from the multiple choices available in the market which effectively managing surplus inventory.

SharePoint Inventory management is becoming highly popular due to its great User Interface and features. Sometimes, you might need an expert in the industry to unlock the best potential of the platform. 

What are the benefits of managing inventory with SharePoint?

• Users can remove the documents that are out of date
• Identifying the duplicate content and removing it instantly
• Understanding the different versions and using them as required 
• Find the documents that are no longer used and delete them to get more space 
• Track the users that have to create and modify the files within the library
• SharePoint inventory export feature helps to keep the library clean to provide more visibility 
• It provides filer, conditional formatting, and sorting features that make inventory management effectively
• Easily add, resize, sort, and filter

How to build a custom inventory list? 

1. Go to the Home page or your site in SharePoint. 
2. Click on Lists from the Quick launch menu 
3. Click on Create button available at the top of the Lists page
4. Choose the Custom List type from the options 
5. Choose List from the List Tools menu
6. Click on the List setting available in the Settings menu
7. Select Create Column under the Column heading 
8. Enter name in the Column Name field
9. Choose the type as required 
10. If the column contains information, enforce unique values under “Additional Column Settings.”
11. Click OK

Repeat Steps 7 to 11 to create new columns in the inventory. 

How to export an Excel inventory list in SharePoint?

1. Reach your site in SharePoint or Access the Home page 
2. Click on Lists from the Quick Launch Menu 
3. Click on create button available at the top of the Lists page 
4. Choose Import Spreadsheet type from the list of options 
5. Enter a name of the List in the Name field
6. Use the Browse button to find the inventory list and click Import to continue
7. Choose the Range Type and Range in the Import to Windows SharePoint Services List dialogue
8. Click on Import to complete the process of list creation in SharePoint 

What is the process of building a SharePoint inventory list in SharePoint?

Create a Page 

A quick procedure to make a page in SharePoint: 

• Go to the modern SharePoint library 
• Click on the Square icon in the top left corner to stay on the home page
• Click on New, then Page
• Enter the name for the page
• Add the information if you want 
• Click on Publish 

Set the Page 

In this case, you can add links to the main menu of the SharePoint site. You can add all the headings by using SharePoint headings styles for sections. Use the heading techniques for the sections to get URLs in the anchor points on the page and use it to build the menu. 

Save Page as a template 

Once you have customized the page view, click on the down arrow near Save in the upper section of the page. Click on Save as a template and give it a name.

Using the template 

Use your template:

• Go to the site and click on New, the Page 
• You will see an option to choose a template 
• Click on template 
• A new page will appear, ready to use 
• Fill out the template and save it

Creating a full inventory list 

You have created a single inventory item that links to the parent page, and it’s fully searchable on the SharePoint site. The next step is to connect it to the parent site to provide navigation downwards. 

On the inventory page of the SharePoint site, link with the domain record in the List. Follow the below process:

• Put the page into edit mode 
• Highlight the text you need to link 
• Click on the chain icon on the text formatting bar 
• Locate the page you plan to link and click on it
• Click on Save 
• Repeat the process for other pages if required 
• Click on Publish/Republish on the page 

How are SharePoint inventory lists evolving the process of managing data?

SharePoint lists and libraries have been a part of people’s journey for more than a decade. This might be a great solution if you deal with announcements, task lists, contact details, or calendars. Some types of SharePoint list you can have:

• Customers: It stores the customer details that are inserted into the site 
• Suppliers: Their relevant information like name, products, or address
• Sales: This is the data from the customers about the price and quantity 
• Inventory: This deals with items, quantity, and related data 
• Orders: These are the orders for suppliers with their cost and quantity

The modern SharePoint list and libraries experience will enable you to:

• Pin documents, filters, and links at the top level to highlight them 
• Improve the display of lists with a column with filters to build custom views
• Effortlessly add, sort, filter, group, resize and reorder columns

The Final Note! 

SharePoint inventory management has brought in solutions for businesses to capture sales and purchases effortlessly. Some features that you get are:

• Tabbed forms interface to provide smooth navigation 
• The dashboard displays pie charts for quantity status, sales, and tracking order status. 
• Reorder functionality for inventory 
• Unique forms for managing inventory, orders, customers, suppliers, and sales. 

Managing inventory efficiently has never been so simple and effortless. SharePoint lets you enjoy your journey towards growth while dealing with structured information.