A shop can look full and still be in trouble. The shelves show what you can see. The stock record shows what the business believes it has. Stock control is the work of keeping those two in agreement, and of knowing what to do when they are not.
What counts as stock
Stock is everything the business owns and plans to sell. That includes goods on the shelf, goods in the storeroom, and damaged items waiting to go back to the supplier. Orders that have been placed but not delivered are not on your shelf yet, but you keep track of them because they will become stock when they arrive.
Stock is also an investment. The business usually pays for it up front, so every item that is lost, spoiled or forgotten comes straight out of the owner's pocket.
Three questions the record must answer
A good stock record lets anyone in the business answer three questions without guessing.
- How much of each product do we have right now?
- Where is it? On the shelf, in the back room, or in the damaged stock area.
- What do we need to order, and when? Lesson 3 shows how to work this out.
If the record is wrong, people stop trusting it and start guessing, and guessing is expensive.
When the two disagree
The difference between what the record says and what is physically there is called a variance. Every business has variances. What matters is that someone notices them, writes them down and asks why.
A small shop's record shows 12 tins of beans. A customer asks for them and the shelf holds 9. Three tins may have been sold without being recorded, damaged and put aside, or moved to another shelf. Until someone checks, the owner cannot tell which, and the record cannot be trusted for the next order.
What it costs when stock is wrong
- Wrong orders. Ordering is based on the record, so a wrong record means too much of one product and too little of another.
- Unhappy customers. An item the record says is there but cannot be found sends the customer to another shop.
- Wasted time. People recount, search and argue about whose number is right.
- Hidden losses. Stock that has been damaged, expired or taken can go unnoticed for months if nobody compares the shelf with the record.
Everyone who handles stock is part of this
The record is only as honest as the people who feed it. Whoever receives goods, packs shelves, serves customers or throws away damaged items changes the real stock, and the record has to change with it. Accuracy is a shared habit, not one person's job.
- Stock is money until it is sold.
- The record and the shelf must match.
- The difference between them is a variance, and every variance needs a reason.