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Stocktaking

Accurate stocktaking is the most important element of a computerised stock control system. Scanning at the point of sale will eliminate almost all errors in stock purchased by customers but errors can be introduced by a number of other factors.

·	Customer theft - the most obvious source of errors

·	Staff theft - often larger than customer theft

·	Failure to record stock when delivered

·	Recording stock deliveries more than once, or miss-keying the number of packs

·	Errors in pack sizes recorded

·	Miss-counts or recording errors during a stock-take

While theft levels are important information when running a shop, errors due to other effects can often disguise true theft levels. Errors in stock levels will also result in unnecessary out-of-stocks and over-ordering. The more effective the ordering system is at minimising the total stock levels, the more damaging stock level errors will be.
Consider the effect of the theft of say three bars of chocolate. Until the stock level is checked and corrected, the chocolate bars may never be ordered again.
The same problem can arise with routine stock-takes. Say there has just been a delivery of the same chocolate bars, and there are now 50 bars on the shelf. With a number this large it is fairly easy to make a mistake. Three under, and you will end up in the same situation and be convinced that there is a theft problem.
Data entry is also a problem. Extra key presses such as typing 77 instead of 7 can lead to significant errors. Entering a sheet of stock-take figures can lead to whole pages of errors when a single row is missed out.
The stocktaking methods used here have been evolved to reduce all these errors to a minimum.
First, all stock checks are date stamped. This allows for stocktaking on a rolling basis.
Second, stocktaking can be confined to items with a low stock count - less than ten items. This allows for rapid stocktaking and few errors in counts. This does mean that if this method is used exclusively, slow moving stock with high counts may never be counted, but errors in slow moving stock do not impact on profitability to the same degree.
Third, a stock-take of lines ordered is routinely done. These tend to be mostly low numbers, and this eliminates over-ordering due to errors caused by not entering stock when delivered.
The result of these strategies is that most stock is stock-checked every month without much effort. Fast moving stock will be counted much more often.
The Stocktaking by Department>All screen can be activated by using the Alt-s combination.

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