Knowledge is power and the more you know about your stock, the better you will be able to manage it. By conducting regular stocktakes, you can gain valuable insights that enable you to make stock decisions proactively and more importantly, help to increase your bottom line. By revealing discrepancies between inventory records and the stock you actually have, stocktake helps you to discover issues that result in incorrect counts or stock loss and prevent your business from moving into a profitable direction.
In simple terms, stocktake or stocktaking is counting the inventory/stock currently on hand. By highlighting discrepancies in stock and identifying any issues to be tackled, a properly performed stocktake provides you with a complete picture of what is happening with your stock and sets you up well for the next financial period. Proper stocktaking can help you to identify and deal with stock issues such as damaged stock, slow moves and theft. Additionally, it enables you to make informed decisions regarding stock going forward.
The Need for A Problem-Free Stocktake
With accurate information on stocks, businesses can identify overstocked or slow-moving items, minimize back orders, unearth problems such as theft or wastage, and improve customer service. On the other hand, if stocktaking is performed incorrectly, then you can suffer a host of problems including misrepresented financial statements and inaccurate financial forecasts.
By using a professional stocktaking service experienced in retail stocktaking and food & beverage Stocktaking, you can make the stocktaking process easier and more beneficial for your business. In addition to confirming the stock held for audit purposes, regular stocktaking performed by a professional stocktaking service will help your business to avoid many problems related to your stock.
There is so much you can gain from regular stocktaking that provides you with accurate information on your stock including ensuring efficient operations and improving your customer service. Additionally, you can make more accurate financial forecasts by identifying your stock’s true quantity and then updating this in your inventory management system.
With regular stocktaking, you can prevent problems and maintain control of your business. Don’t limit stocktake to a practice that you perform only once a quarter. Instead, perform regular stocktakes— ideally once every month or weekly (if there are any issues). If you do this, you will know about problems with your stock as they occur. By performing regular stocktakes, you can be proactive with the management of your stock and can gain significant control over it.
Not only does stocktaking such as food & Beverage stocktaking prepare your business for audits, it also helps you to stay vigilant on the physical assets of your retail operation.
To sum it up, regular stocktaking can provide you with actual stock levels, and make you aware of any damaged stock or stock lost to theft as well as the short falls in procedures, allowing you to rectify issues with stock/inventory management to cut the costs/losses associated with them and ultimately improve your bottom line. With the importance of stocktaking established, it is time to move to the ways of enabling a problem free stocktake.
Tips to Ensure a Successful, Stress-Free Stocktake
Many things contribute to discrepancies between inventory records and the actual stock. Depending on industry and the method being used to record inventory, the reasons can vary greatly. However, discrepancies generally happen due to one or more of the following reasons:
- Stock mistaken for similar product
- Stock is in incorrect location
- Counting an incorrect unit of measurement
- Loss if stock due to damage
- Faulty inhouse procedure
- Inaccurate reporting of inbound stock
- Stock labelled with incorrect identification
You can avoid the above problems with your stock by enabling a problem-free stocktake. How do you do that? Following are some tips to ensure a successful, stress-free stocktake.
Plan
How does a successful stocktake start? It starts with carefully planning the processes and involving people. Once the plan is in place, start information your staff and other helpers about it. If everyone involved in the stocktake is on the same page and familiar with the procedures to be followed, then the stocktake will run a lot smoother.
Organize
Take time out to determine the resources you’ll need and the amount of time that will be required to carry out a stocktake before you perform it. Appoint people with strong organizational skills or hire a stocktaking service to ensure that you have the required tools in place including, barcode scanners, and keg weigher & spirit scales. This will help you to save a lot of time later. It is important that stocktaking doesn’t disrupt the regular operation of your business. A great way to ensure this is outsourcing stocktaking to service that specializes in it.
Review
The area of wherever the stock is first received is where stock issues mostly originate. Generally, stocks are personally received by owners of small businesses but as the business starts to grow, the responsibility is transferred to a manager or other people handling stock. As the number of people involved in the process increases, issues with stocks start to arise. To avoid problems and ensure that that the procedure for receiving and storing stock is effective, regular correspondence is required between the manager or the people handling stocks and the business owners or people in charge of the business’ accounting and financial statements. Though it can be hard work, regularly reviewing the processes involving your stocks can make life a whole lot easier for you and your business going forward.
