Economic Order Quantity Explained + Formulas

The economic order quantity, or EOQ, is the optimal number of units a business should purchase when replenishing inventory while minimizing inventory costs that could eat into profit margins. The economic order quantity model is an important consideration because it helps to find the optimal number of units per order. The firms can minimize their material acquisition costs by applying the EOQ model. By adding the holding cost and ordering cost gives the annual total cost of the inventory. For calculation of the EOQ, that is, optimal quantity, the first derivative of the total cost with respect to Q is taken. Holding costs of inventory if often expressed as cost per unit multiplied by interest rate.

The EOQ always assumes that you’re paying the same amount per product every time. Overall, spending time to calculate your EOQ helps you make better decisions when it comes to managing and storing your inventory. The truth is that many businesses place orders based on a gut feeling of how much they need to order instead of ordering the product that is actually needed.

At the same time, EOQ has some key limitations that mean it’s not a formula every business can use – we lay out its advantages and disadvantages below. Though the one thing that you can rely on without a doubt is Upper’s ability to give you the finest routes in existence to reduce delivery costs heavily. The difference Upper makes to the delivery process is best seen first-hand, which is why you should try our 7 days free trial. In the next section, you may input your data into the economic order quantity formula, or follow the example provided below. Click the button below to learn more about how ShipBob can help your brand optimize inventory management.

1. Economic Order Quantity (EOC) is the quantity required to avoid running out of stocks.
2. Most inventory software can also connect to your accounting software too for a more streamlined experience.
3. The larger are the ordered product volumes; the higher are the holding costs.
4. The John Sports Inc. purchases tennis balls at $20 per dozen from its suppliers.
5. By determining a reorder point, the business avoids running out of inventory and can continue to fill customer orders.

Keeping the annual demand constant if for example the number of orders decreases, the ordering cost will also decrease but the holding cost will rise and vice versa. The economic order quantity is the level of quantity at which the combined ordering and holding cost is at the minimum level. The Economic Order Quantity how to prepare a trial balance (EOQ) formula helps to avoid these mis-stocking situations. It calculates the ideal number of units you should order, such that the cost involved is minimal and number of units is optimal. The cost per unit, or unit cost, never changes over the time period, even though the quantity of the order has changed.

Optimized Inventory Means Minimum Stockouts

They want to look specifically at a line of women’s shirts they’re carrying, to decide if there is enough demand to justify a larger order. We saved more than $1 million on our spend in the first year and just recently identified an opportunity to save about $10,000 every month on recurring expenses with Planergy. Some sources will tell you that EOQ and EPQ are the same formula. But while they have some similarities, there is a key difference between them, and they’re meant to be calculated differently.

Why Is Economic Order Quantity Important?

It refers to the optimal amount of inventory a company should purchase in order to meet its demand while minimizing its holding and storage costs. One of the important limitations of the economic order quantity is that it assumes the demand for the company’s products is constant over time. The economic order quantity formula assumes consistent demand, fixed costs, and the absence of other external factors that may impact demand, holding costs, or setup costs. Economic order quantity (EOQ) is the order size that minimizes the sum of ordering and holding costs related to raw materials or merchandise inventories. In other words, it is the optimal inventory size that should be ordered with the supplier to minimize the total annual inventory cost of the business. Other names used for economic order quantity are optimal order size and optimal order quantity.

If these assumptions are not true of your business, you may have some variances. The countless hours spent on route planning and optimization, take mere minutes when you have Upper on your side. Gain control of your delivery routes in the best way imaginable with Upper’s assortment of innovative features that reduce the cost and time taken by deliveries. This illustrates that the economic order quantity is always in the best interests of the firm. The EOQ assumes the lowest level at which stock can be reduced to is zero.

Ordering Cost

It is always good practice to reduce your costs as much as possible, to maximize your profits. Read the next sections to find more about what is EOQ, how to use the simple EOQ formula and what the EOQ meaning is to improve your inventory management. Calculating economic order quantity is easy if you only have to calculate the EOQ of one product. However, when you’re dealing with many products, calculating EOQ can be time-consuming and prone to human error. This means that the ideal order quantity to optimize inventory costs is just slightly above 60 or whatever your EOQ is. ShipBob provides warehousing and many inbound and outbound logistics services for thousands of ecommerce merchants.

Some systems, such as Lightspeed Retail’s POS system, will even let you set your desired inventory levels ahead of time. Many POS systems allow you to set reorder points, or inventory thresholds that indicate when to order more stock. When your product inventory levels reach their reorder points, you’ll be prompted to place another order.

So, the perfect quantity for an order, which will minimize inventory costs, is 4,899 units. As the name suggests, ordering costs occur every time the company places an order with its supplier. Ordering costs are charged for each order, so the more times the orders are made, the higher the annual ordering cost. General ordering costs may include delivery fees, telephone charges, expenses related to the payment process, and inventory verifications. Calculating the EOQ for your business helps you find a good balance for your order and inventory costs, which are easy to overlook in day-to-day business.

In that case, EOQ can be a beneficial tool to help you find an optimal level of order quantity. It is the ideal or optimal quantity of inventory that can be ordered at a time to minimize the annual costs of inventory. The economic order quantity is computed by both manufacturing https://simple-accounting.org/ companies and merchandising companies. The Economic Order Quantity is a set point designed to help companies minimize the cost of ordering and holding inventory. The cost of ordering inventory falls with the increase in ordering volume due to purchasing on economies of scale.

That means their ideal order size to minimize their costs while also meeting customer demand is a bit over 28 shirts. Since you cannot order .3 of a shirt, the minimum order could either be 28 or 29. EOQ is based on ordering products from a third party, while EPQ refers to products being manufactured by the business, and therefore takes rate of production into account.

Businesses use it as a valuable tool to make decisions about the number of inventory to order and keep, and how often to reorder to attract the lowest possible costs. The EOQ formula can be paired with the reorder point formula, which helps a business identify when it should order more inventory. Using these calculations together can help a business avoid running out of stock for its products without carrying more inventory than it needs to. Economic order quantity is important because it helps companies manage their inventory efficiently. The EOQ formula determines the inventory reorder point of a company. When inventory falls to a certain level, the EOQ formula, if applied to business processes, triggers the need to place an order for more units.

By determining a reorder point, the business avoids running out of inventory and can continue to fill customer orders. If the company runs out of inventory, there is a shortage cost, which is the revenue lost because the company has insufficient inventory to fill an order. An inventory shortage may also mean the company loses the customer or the client will order less in the future.

I can literally not look at the ShipBob platform for 3 weeks, and then log in and within 10 minutes of analyzing the data, I know exactly where we stand in the business. Using EOQ to balance your inventory can be challenging, but logistics partners like ShipBob can take some of the heavy lifting off your plate. Things like seasonality or big sales can also affect your inventory accuracy. In addition to EOQ, there are a few other ways to optimize inventory.