Here are the top 10 ways to reduce stock losses in your business.

1) Have a good working knowledge of how to use your Point of Sale (POS) effectively 
Many businesses have expensive, state-of-the-art electronic management tools at their disposal but use their POS as a cash box rather than a tool that can manage their stock more effectively. Use it to manage your stock.

2) Have a live stock system in place
Time spent on having a system in place so as you can see the movement of each stock item at the click of a button and to manage it through the system from back door to front will ensure that stock is managed in the best possible way. It will show staff and suppliers that discrepancies will be identified.

3) Know what stock you have on hand
It’s your stock and it is how you make money so have a plan so as to have it counted several times per year.

4) Know the level of shrinkage that is occurring within your business
Thinking that you have a problem is not good enough.

5) Identify what products are causing you problems
Put in place a plan to reduce the shrinkage of them. This is done through either stocktaking (preferred method so as to identify the exact problem item) or a departmental analysis of scanning margin versus actual margin (but this is not as accurate and will not identify the problem items).

6) Time to investigate discrepancies 
Complete stocktakes and don’t take the time or allocate the resources to analysing the variances. This is where the real money is.

7) Communicate any issues that arise with your team, at all levels
Explain what is being done to tackle shrinkage. 

8) Train your staff
It is important that your staff are trained in both how to work your POS and also how to manage your stock (including ordering, receiving, storing, displaying, and selling all stock items).

9) It is everyone’s responsibility
A common mistake is to place only the best, the most diligent person in charge of managing the stock. A good idea in principle but what do you do when they are off, on holidays, on a break, out sick or leave to work elsewhere? Yes, have one responsible person who is in charge, but also share the knowledge to others so as they are aware of a company attitude, that “stock losses will be identified”

10) You may think that you are saving money by completing your stocktakes inhouse, generally you are not.
Ensure your stocktakes are accurate, do rechecks, the best Stocktaking companies will ask you to audit their work, do rechecks so that you know you are getting 100% Accuracy

Stocktaking.ie complete 100% rechecks on all high value good like Alcohol and Cigarettes…….just saying!

If you’d like to know more about how Stocktaking.ie can help you complete accurate stocktake, contact us and speak with our team of Stocktaking experts today!

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Info@Stocktaking.ie

091 762 001

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An accurate Stocktake helps you make the correct decisions about managing your business.

It allows you to reconcile physical stock to the stock levels, identify variances, and discover issues with stock management and control.

With accurate knowledge about stock movements and stock on hand, you can make informed decisions about theft/shrinkage, slow-moving items, damaged stock, technological discrepancies and warehouse processes.

1. Clearly identify what stock is owned by the business and all areas to be counted

Separate stock that’s been invoiced to a customer, but is still in store. Likewise, stock received but not yet recorded, should be distinguished.

Make sure stock held at different locations or on lay away for deposit items and such, is accounted for

2. Make sure the stock room is clean and tidy and stock items are clearly laid out.

Attach labels to shelves to clearly identify different departments; eg, categorise products and label stock not to be counted etc…

Give stock takers clear guidance on the way they should count; eg, start at the top shelf and work your way down, while working from left to right. This provides clear instructions and if this process is carried out correctly can be helpful in identifying discrepancies. Of course if you use Stocktaking.ie then you need not worry about this because we have all of these procedures in place for every stocktake.

3. Tools for the stocktake

• Hand held scanners – For Barcoded Stock.
• Trained Stocktakers – Untrained Stocktakers may not fully understand the process.
• Supervisors – To spot check certain areas to ensure maximum accuracy.
• Preparation – Although not necessarily a tool, good prep can shave a lot of time off your Stocktake.

5. Count every product in stock. Don’t estimate!

It might seem tedious and you may think there are only a certain amount of items while looking at them but always count everything physically to avoid human error, it’s much better to get a 100 percent accurate record the first time.

Just because the carton says there are 24 items in the box doesn’t mean there actually are. This goes for items in boxes on the shop floor also, Confectionery & sweets often come in a small box with the quantity on the outside. Even if it looks full it could have a small amount of product sold, So double check!

6. Check the physical count against Live Stock levels. Recheck discrepancies

Make a note about variances and follow up where necessary. This can be useful information for Stocktakes after this, If the same discrepancy pops up again it could be an easier fix second time around.

 7. Update your records

Once the Stocktake has been finalised, update Your stock levels in accordance.

A well-planned Stocktake will result in minimal disruption, accurate inventory records and provides a basis for making well informed business decisions from top to bottom.

If you’d like to know more about how Stocktaking.ie can help you complete accurate stocktake, contact us and speak with our team of Stocktaking experts today!

Still want to count your stock in-house? Try DigiTally!

• Digital Stocktakes
• Eliminate pen, paper, Excel and double entry
• Reduce stocktaking time by 66%

DigiTally Preview

Take me to the DigiTally website!

5 Quick Steps To Control Your Fresh Food Costs

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Know your margin – Conduct frequent counts of your inventory. This way, you will know your exact food cost. Calculating your margin by dividing purchases by sales and assuming a standard opening/closing inventory value, is simply disguising the truth of poor internal practices. Don’t be lazy!
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Get your team involved – Don’t keep the numbers a secret, make your employees aware of the problem you are trying to solve, this way you are far more likely to solve it and curtail it reoccurring and damaging your margin. Place it in a prominent position in your kitchen/staff canteen.

Still want to count your stock in-house? Try DigiTally!

• Digital Stocktakes
• Eliminate pen, paper, Excel and double entry
• Reduce stocktaking time by 66%

DigiTally Preview

Take me to the DigiTally website!

Optimising your Stocktakes is a key factor in making sure you’re managing your profit margins!

You’re probably wondering if there’s a better way to control your stock taking and counts of your inventory, perhaps different methods & team sizes etc and how to just get more efficient stocktaking. Or maybe you’re wondering how much money you’re losing out on with incorrect stock takes, you will most likely be very surprised!

CNBC published an article back in 2015 that retailers are losing almost $2 trillion due to incorrect stocktakes that cause complex issues such as out-of-stock items, overstocks and returns, this number is only moving higher and higher so this highlights the need for an accurate and efficient stocktaking solution.

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/30/retailers-are-losing-nearly-2-trillion-over-this.html

That sure is a lot of money to be lost! a lot of that money should be staying in your business, helping you grow, not halting your development and you finding yourself out of pocket.

Remember, an accurate and proper count of your inventory will also relate to happy customers as stock outages will be avoided – this may then lead to them going elsewhere to find what they’re after, this in-turn means you’re losing customers, trust, revenue and most importantly, losing customers to competitors.

We here at EasyCount have over a decades worth of experience relating to stocktaking so we can help you with managing your stocktakes with these steps;

Have a plan!

Don’t wake up one day and decide “lets do a count of all inventory today”. Firstly start with the question, why do I need a count it? For valuation purposes? for your accountant and financial management reasons? To avoid stock outages? To update your point of sale? To identify stock discrepancies?

Create a plan as to why you need one, how you will undertake it, who will do it, and what will you do with your result. Only you can answer these questions for your own business.

Technology is the way forward

You may still be using pen, paper & Excel, you may have used them for many years and are comfortable in doing so, but don’t you just hate double-entry? And maybe you just want to conduct your stocktakes in-house and not pay for outsourced solutions each time?

Technology is ever growing and more and more business are looking at ways to cater technology to their needs to push themselves up the business ladder and attract more attention. Technology is accurate and easily accessible, it’s constantly changing and looking for new ways to create new solutions to make those mundane tasks much faster.

Instead of using pen, paper & Excel, how about eliminate all those tools are just go for an electronic approach? all your data and counts will be stored in a virtual cloud meaning you can access your stock counts wherever you are, whenever, so long as you have an internet connection you will always be able to keep track of your counts. Most importantly its faster, easier, cheaper and a very secure solution to making sure your data is safe and not on 100’s of pieces of paper with Excel spreadsheets!

If you’re interested in an electronic way to count your stock, head on over to  https://easycount.io/

Physical counting for accurate stocktaking

You may think using technology to count your stock is all you need to do, right? wrong!

Tracking your stock levels by doing a physical count is the most accurate way in making sure your not mismanaging your inventory.

You can have multiple teams count physically for you in larger areas, again this is easily checked, audited and synced with your electronic devices such as EasyCount.

Post Inventory

Now the work really starts for once a count of your inventory is completed, you now need to analyse the results. What are your stock losses? Have you compared scanning margin to your actual margin? Why are these different? Are high value stock lines investigated fully?

In essence, follow the money. Don’t worry too much about missing 2,000 small items at a cost of €0.01 each when you have another piece of equipment at €2,000 which is unaccounted for. Prioritise what is worthy of your time in investigating. A company we worked with recently wanted to priortise their stock control function. Post stocktake, they sorted the results by the largest variance by value, started with discrepancies at over €1,000, once they are rectified, look at over €500. Repeat this process. They now only investigate variance of product of over €50 across thousand of product lines. Most importantly, this must be done IMMEDIATELY after the count of your inventory. Days and weeks later is no good and less likely to yield results.

Final Notes

We hope these small, but helpful tips will encourage you to take accurate stocktakes to ensure your maximizing profits in your business – maybe you wish to stick with pen, paper & Excel although the prospect of going fully digital is something we endorse and that’s why we’re looking to making stocktaking a lot less mundane for future counts.

Still want to count your stock in-house? Try DigiTally!

• Digital Stocktakes
• Eliminate pen, paper, Excel and double entry
• Reduce stocktaking time by 66%

DigiTally Preview

Take me to the DigiTally website!

The 7 Golden Rules of A Stocktake

An accurate Stocktake helps you make the correct decisions about managing your business.

It allows you to reconcile physical stock to the stock levels, identify variances, and discover issues with stock management and control.

With accurate knowledge about stock movements and stock on hand, you can make informed decisions about theft/shrinkage, slow-moving items, damaged stock, technological discrepancies and warehouse processes.

Here are my top tips to have a smooth, successful and stress-free stocktake.

1. Clearly identify what stock is owned by the business and all areas to be counted

Separate stock that’s been invoiced to a customer, but is still in store. Likewise, stock received but not yet recorded, should be distinguished.

Make sure stock held at different locations or on lay away for deposit items and such, is accounted for.

2. Make sure the stock room is clean and tidy and stock items are clearly laid out.

Attach labels to shelves to clearly identify different departments; eg, categorise products and label stock not to be counted etc…

Give stock takers clear guidance on the way they should count; eg, start at the top shelf and work your way down, while working from left to right. This provides clear instructions and if this process is carried out correctly can be helpful in identifying discrepancies.

3. Tools for the stocktake

• Hand held scanners – For bar-coded inventory.
• Trained Stocktakers – Untrained Stocktakers may not fully understand the process.
• Supervisors – To spot check certain areas to ensure maximum accuracy.
• Preparation – Although not necessarily a tool, good prep can shave a lot of time off your Stocktake.

4. Discourage radios, mobile phones, earphones and idle chit chat

While it might seem unnecessary, distractions can easily lead to errors. Errors lead to inaccurate reports, Thus Undermining the whole effort of the Stocktake.

5. Count every product in stock. Don’t estimate!

It might seem tedious, And you may think there are only a certain amount of items while looking at them but always count everything physically to avoid human error, it’s much better to get a 100 percent accurate record the first time.

Just because the carton says there are 24 items in the box doesn’t mean there actually are. This goes for items in boxes on the shop floor also, Confectionery & sweets often come in a small box with the quantity on the outside. Even if it looks full it could have a small amount of product sold, So double check!

6. Check the physical count against Live Stock levels. Recheck discrepancies

Make a note about variances and follow up where necessary. This can be useful information for Stocktakes after this, If the same discrepancy pops up again it could be an easier fix second time around.

 7. Update your records

Once the Stocktake has been finalised, update Your stock levels in accordance.

A well-planned Stocktake will result in minimal disruption, accurate inventory records and provides a basis for making well informed business decisions from top to bottom.

Still want to count your stock in-house? Try DigiTally!

• Digital Stocktakes
• Eliminate pen, paper, Excel and double entry
• Reduce stocktaking time by 66%

DigiTally Preview

Take me to the DigiTally website!

5 Most Common Stock Management Mistakes.

Improper stock control can ruin your business. Be aware that we’re all prone to making costly mistakes that can spell the end for your business, Even Nike wasn’t immune. In the early 2000’s, lack of stock control led to the loss of, hold your breath, approximately $100 million in sales. That is a big loss for any company, even a company the calibre of Nike.

After all of the hullabaloo, Nike’s stock price plummeted 20%, It was slapped by several class-action lawsuits, and became the poster child for inefficient implementations. Fortunately, they were able to bounce back by using a better stock control system. If it can happen to one of the biggest companies in the world, it can happen to you too.

We’ve rounded up the top 5 Stock management mistakes businesses make and the possible solutions:

Failure To Accurately Forecast Demand

Nike’s problem, Like most stemmed from inaccurate forecast demand,  Its software had bugs and errors and produced inaccurate forecast, which they used for their manufacturing plan. As a result, They did not have the products that were in demand and had too much of the products that were not selling. A perfect example of exactly what you do not want going wrong with your stock.

Stock control systems, first and foremost, must be free from bugs and data errors. Demand forecasts are critical to producing the right number of items and if the calculations are off, you’re in trouble, especially if you’re running a wholesale business. There are quick and easy ways to avoid this, Use an external Stocktaking company and outsource counting from the business. Alternatively use a cloud based stock management app to keep on top of it all yourself. However above all else a live stock system gives you maximum traceability and would help contribute to lowering shrinkage.

Lack Of Automation

If you’re still tracking inventory with Excel, or with pen and paper, then you could be losing money. Manual tracking of stock in & out takes too much time and won’t get you accurate results. You’re wasting time and valuable resources  that keep you from focusing your energy on other areas that can help grow your business. There’s also the fact that manual tracking means that you’re vulnerable to human error, as well as employee pilferage. And we’re all human!

There are many case studies for companies that have increased revenue through efficient stock control. Tasks can be automated, cutting down on staff hours & thus saving money which can then be put back into the company leading to increased growth.

Improper Training

For companies who are using software that’s installed on local computers, issues are common because not everyone knows how to use it correctly. When there’s so much to do and only one person who’s familiar with the system, you can get left behind in orders. Lack of proper training can severely affect your ability to keep up with orders or worse, result in wrong products being sent out, which will cause both customer satisfaction and retention levels to drop.

Cloud based stock management systems are beneficial in so many ways:

• They have easier learning curves and it shouldn’t take long to train employees properly.
• Easy access for those who travel a lot and multiple employees can log in remotely at once.
• No need to have separate people process orders, check stock, or track inventory.

Inefficient System Implemented Inside The Warehouses

It’s not uncommon for warehouse managers to fail in finding more efficient ways to handle business as they are warehouse managers not business owners. Simply rearranging goods so they’re easily taken out for shipment can save you massively on your bottom line. Often times, employees take too much time looking for an item which may be misplaced or if your stock levels are incorrect may not even be there. Always remember that wasted time is money lost.

A simple solution is to figure out which items sell more and place them near the shipping area so they can easily be dispatched. Sales & demand reports should give you a good idea which items to put close to the door. Additionally, don’t randomly put stock where there’s available space just because its free. Allocate each product a specific area based on popularity so they can be easily retrieved.

In order to make sure the flow of goods is optimized and minimize bottlenecks. Efficient time management spent on counting, picking, packing and finally moving each shipment through the handling system. If you can’t figure out how to get the workflow right in order to minimize the amount of time spent here, consider investing in consultants who will be able to advise you on this.

Less Frequent Stocktakes

Many companies cease operations for a day to check inventory. This can result to profit loss. It’s worse for huge businesses that have so much inventory; they can end up profitless for weeks.

This is an outdated method and one that’s not productive at all. You’re better off scheduling more frequent regular stocktakes to keep the company from shutting down operations and missing out on sales. In addition to this, even if you do find a discrepancy during your stocktake, it will be difficult to pinpoint the problem when you have the time-frame of an entire financial year or to look back on.

There are many ways to keep on top of your stock. Operating a live stock system and performing more frequent Stocktakes will help eliminate profit losses to an extent. Using live stock and performing regular Stocktakes gives you 100% accuracy and confidence in your numbers. This may even translate into converted sales as sales reps with more visibility and clarity on stock levels will be able to communicate more confidently knowing they have the product the prospective customer wants!

Inventory management can be tedious, However using a streamlined process with the correct tools, will greatly reduce mistakes and improve operations which can lead to more sales and overall better business.

Still want to count your stock in-house? Try DigiTally!

• Digital Stocktakes
• Eliminate pen, paper, Excel and double entry
• Reduce stocktaking time by 66%

DigiTally Preview

Take me to the DigiTally website!