Setting a minimum that means something
A minimum level should reflect how fast the item moves and how long a replacement takes to arrive, not a round number. A fast line with a two-day supplier lead time needs a low minimum; a slow line coming from another state needs a higher one. The movement report gives you the first half of that calculation, and you already know the second. Set them on your top thirty items first — those are where a stockout actually costs money.
Ordering from figures, not memory
Item movement over any date range shows what actually sold. For seasonal trades — the hill states, the agricultural belts, anywhere the building season is short — last season's movement is the right basis for this season's order, and that decision is usually made once and cannot be corrected. The same report shows what has not moved, which is where a shop finds capital it did not know was tied up.
What alerts cannot fix
An alert tells you an item is low; it does not tell you whether ordering is wise. In a trade where rates move, buying ahead of a rise is worth money and buying ahead of a fall is not, and no software knows which is coming. Treat the alert as a prompt to decide rather than as an instruction, and keep the decision with whoever watches the market.
Alerts across godowns
Where stock sits in more than one location, the alert can be read per godown as well as in total — because twelve tons that are all at the yard three kilometres away is not the same as twelve tons at the shop when a customer is waiting. A transfer between locations is often the answer rather than a purchase.
Reviewing minimum levels
A minimum set once and never revisited becomes wrong as the shop changes. Review them twice a year against the movement report, and adjust two groups: items that alerted repeatedly and were never actually short, where the level is too high and is tying up cash, and items that ran out without warning, where it is too low. Twenty minutes covers your top thirty lines, which is where the money is. Everything below that can be left to alert or not without much consequence.