Counting stock without fooling yourself
Count blind, count often, and read the difference properly before you accuse anybody.
Here is the test. Somebody counts a shelf while holding a paper that says the shelf should hold 52. They count 51. What happens next? They count again, and this time they find 52.
That is not dishonesty, it is how eyes work. Once you know the answer you are checking, you are no longer counting. You are agreeing. This is why shops that count every month report near-perfect stock and still lose goods every week.
Count blind
The fix is simple and slightly annoying: write down what is on the shelf before you look at what anything says it should be. Only then compare.
On paper, that means two sheets and some discipline: the person counting writes the shelf figure, then somebody else brings the book figure. On a phone it can be structural. AxisTrade's counting screen simply never shows you its own figure until you have entered yours, so the temptation is not there to resist.
Count a little, often
The whole shop once a year produces a number so large and so late that you cannot do anything with it. Twenty fast-moving products every Friday tells you where the loss is while the answer is still findable.
Rank by value moved, not by how many items there are. The lines to count weekly are the ones that are expensive, small, or easy to walk out with. Sacks of rice look after themselves; tins and sachets do not.
Count when nobody is selling
Before opening or after closing, never in the middle of a queue. A count taken while goods are moving is not a count, it is an estimate with extra steps.
Do not always send the same person to the same shelf either. Not because you suspect them, but because a fresh pair of eyes finds things a familiar pair stops seeing, including the four dusty tins behind the display.
A Friday count at Madina
Here is what three lines of a real count look like, and what to do about them.
Book, shelf, difference
- Milo 400g Tin
- book 52 · shelf 46 · −6
- Sugar 1kg (St. Louis)
- book 30 · shelf 31 · +1
- Key Soap (bar)
- book 18 · shelf 18 · 0
- What the Milo 400g difference is worth at cost
- GH₵ 153.00
Six tins is not a number worth a meeting. GH₵ 153.00 in one week, on one product, is. Always value the difference before you decide how upset to be about it.
The extra bag of sugar matters too, though not for the reason people assume. Stock that appears is nearly always a recording mistake, and a recording mistake in your favour today is one against you next month.
What a difference is actually telling you
A difference is a question, not a verdict. Work through the causes in this order, because this is roughly the order of how common they are.
- A sale recorded in the wrong unit. Somebody sold a carton and the shelf figure came down by one tin, or the other way around. This is the single most common cause and it is not theft.
- A delivery entered twice, or entered as cartons and sold as tins.
- A return that came back onto the shelf and was never recorded.
- Breakage and expiry that nobody wrote down because nobody wanted to.
- Goods taken for the house, which are real and are a cost, and stop being a mystery the moment you record them.
- Theft, which is the last thing on this list on purpose. It is where people start and it is where you should finish.
Attach the reason to the correction, every time. At the end of the month, 'damaged 14' and 'theft 14' are two completely different conversations, and if you did not write the reason down you will only remember the number.
Book the difference the same day
A count you do not act on is worse than no count, because the next one measures two weeks of two problems mixed together and tells you nothing about either.
Correct the figure the same day, with the reason attached, and let the count stand as the new truth. In AxisTrade that is one tap per differing line: the shelf figure becomes the figure, the correction is recorded with its reason, and the product stops being flagged for recount.
What good looks like
Not zero. Good is small differences, explained, on a handful of lines, and the same lines not drifting week after week. A shop reporting perfect counts every single week is not counting properly, and the person doing the counting knows it.
The goal is not a clean sheet. It is that nothing is losing you money quietly for longer than seven days.
Read next
What your profit actually is
Sales, minus what the goods cost, minus money out. A full worked week that adds up.
Pricing when customers haggle
Set a price you advertise and a floor you will not go below, and know what each cedi of haggling costs you.
Running a shop without the exercise book
What the book does well, what it cannot do, and how to move over without losing the trust it had.
