The traditional answer to stock accuracy is an annual stock-take: close for a day, count everything, reconcile. It works, and almost nobody does it, because closing for a day is expensive and there is always a better week next month.
The alternative is to stop treating counting as an event. Count a handful of items every day, during quiet minutes that already exist. Over two months you will have covered everything that matters, without ever closing, and you will have found each problem within days of it happening rather than eleven months later.
What to count, and how often
| Kind of item | How often | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Expensive, fast-moving | Weekly | The most money at risk, and errors build up fastest. |
| Expensive, slow-moving | Monthly | High value, but fewer transactions to introduce mistakes. |
| Cheap, fast-moving | Monthly | Errors accumulate, but each one costs little. |
| Cheap, slow-moving | Twice a year, or not at all | The effort of counting genuinely exceeds what a difference would cost you. |
The ten-minute routine
- 1
Pick the items before you open, or the day before
Ten items, chosen from your rotation rather than by wandering the shop and picking what catches your eye. Deliberate selection is what makes the coverage even.
- 2
Count what is physically there, everywhere it is
The shelf, the back, the box behind the counter. Stock in three places counted in one is the most common cause of a false difference.
- 3
Write the count down before opening the app
This is the step people skip and it is the one that keeps the count honest. Comparing after committing to a number is a genuine check; comparing while counting is not.
- 4
Adjust, with a reason
Damage, theft, sold under a different name, delivery never received. Record which. The reason is what turns a correction into information.
Reading the reasons over time
A single difference is noise. A pattern in the reasons is worth acting on, and it only becomes visible if the reasons were recorded rather than the quantities silently corrected.
- The same item short every month, in small amounts: usually a billing problem — sold under the wrong product, or a multi-pack rung up as a single.
- One item short by a large amount, once: an event. Worth asking about while people still remember the week.
- Consistently over: often a receiving error, where more arrived than was recorded, or a return that was never entered.
- Differences clustered on one shelf or one shift: worth looking at as a pattern rather than as individual items.
The annual stock-take finds what went wrong. Counting a little at a time finds it while somebody still remembers why.