As a business owner, we understand that you are busy running your business. To make your life easier, we’ve put together a guide to help you stock the essentials you need for your business:

1. Take stock of what you have.

Before you begin purchasing a new shipment of cleaning supplies, printer paper, or whatever essentials you need to keep your small business functioning, take a moment to review the existing supplies inventory that you have.

Don’t forget to discard any supplies that are no longer safe to use. While certain supplies like mops or brooms won’t expire, items like cleaning agents and disinfectants tend to have shelf lives of one to two years.

2. Create a list of essentials to purchase.

If you haven’t re-stocked your supplies in a while, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of items that need to be purchased. A good way to begin creating your business’ shopping list is by reviewing the supplies that you and your team bought in the past year, and seeing whether any of those items need to be repurchased.

Additionally, there are many resources online with supplies list for a variety of businesses. For your reference, we’ve linked an example of a comprehensive cleaning supplies list for facility maintenance companies.

3. Select the brands for the items on your shopping list.

You can ask your team which brands and products they would recommend purchasing again, and which ones you may want to re-evaluate for your next purchase order.

Additionally, as industry standards evolve and customer tastes change, you may want to do some research to understand what types of supplies will help you best serve your customers. For example, as more commercial cleaning customers want eco-friendly cleaning products used in their workspaces, cleaning company owners should think about stocking their businesses with green, environmentally friendly products.

4. Buy the products from a trusted supplier.

Choosing the right suppliers for your business is crucial to ensuring that you and your team are able to provide your customers with the high-quality services they are expecting.

When chatting with potential suppliers, make sure to not only ask for references you can contact, but also ask about important factors like lead times between order submission and delivery of supplies, whether there are maximum or minimum order quantities, delivery methods, return policies, prices, and other terms and conditions that you should know about. Taking some time to do your homework on your prospective suppliers will save you heartburn in the future.

5. BONUS: Consider getting a supply management system, if you don’t already have one.

If you are struggling to manually manage the processes of keeping your business stocked with the essentials, you may want to look into getting a supply management system. A good supply management system will be able to help you with managing inventory, shipping schedules, suppliers, and warehouse storage for your supplies, along with demand management.

If you’re looking to stock your business with janitorial and facility maintenance supplies, our team at ACTION Unlimited Resources would be happy to chat with you about your needs. Our approach is to understand your goals and processes so that we can work with you to stock the supplies you need at the best value.