Of all perpetual problems a retailer faces, the one that frights him the most is the one he feels he can never solve. Or even if he attempts to, he presumes it will not help him solve completely. And even if he can complete it, he reasons it will never be accurate.
We are talking about the perpetual stock audit. A paradoxical puzzle that’s engulfed by enigma and a confusing conundrum that retailers feel is better left untouched. And makes him feel helpless and completely resigned to his fate!
The sad part is, it doesn’t have to be this way. The retailer doesn’t need to fear stock audits. The problem is not the stock audit in itself. It’s the method the retailer currently uses. A method that presumes fallacies, consumes time and subsumes sufficient room for blunders and boo boos.
What is Stock Audit?
Stock audit is the method of auditing the physical stocks in the inventory by counting each item and matching it with the book stocks or computed stocks. Stock Audit is carried out to ensure whether there are any discrepancies in the stocks and to calculate the total investments that are held in the stocks to predict the cash flow for the next year. Generally, a stock take audit has to be performed by businesses at least once a year, which is a cumbersome and inaccurate process that requires much effort and time. Doing frequent audits every week or month or day gives you better inventory control and helps you bypass the year-end Stock Audit headache.
Take this small test, will you, with a straight yes or no answer.
- Are you investing heavily in a quality barcode scanner just to perform stock audit?
- Do you feel stock-taking isn’t efficient if you don’t monitor it when it’s done?
- Are you investing in reams of paper for an inventory audit?
- Are you closing your store when you conduct year-end stock audit?
- Are you spending way too much time in inventory reconciliation after counting? And still ending up being inaccurate?
If you answered in the affirmative to all these questions, it’s time to discard your antiquated and outdated stock audit system and embrace a new and easy way of stock auditing. For starters, here’s a story that you can empathize with. A story of a retailer who started like you and ended up happy!
Brace yourself for the story of Grace supermarket
For 25 years their stock auditing was a nightmare too. They had to count every piece, write it on paper and bring it to computers. All this had to be done after closing the stores and losing their sale. When they didn’t want to lose sales, they started doing it at the night, incurring extra costs and encountering staff burdens.
They practiced stock audit, top to bottom, left to right, to ensure every shelf was covered. This activity took them all night to do. They wrote on paper and uploaded it into the system. While comparing the book stock with the physical stock, they found huge discrepancies. Sometimes even up to 20%. Comparing it with the lower profit margins they were earning, they wondered if they were in the right business at all.
They decided to use scanners. Instead of taking products from shelves to the table, scanners moved from tables to the shelves. They continued to count each item with a scanner instead of manually writing down. It was better, but not good enough. Their discrepancy rate was 10%. That’s when Grace decided to embrace a new way, a proper way. They bought GoSure StockTake!
How to do a Stock Audit?
Stock Audit is done by comparing the book stocks with the physical stocks available in the store to find the discrepancy or any errors in the available stocks. A stock audit is typically performed by scanning the physical items with the StockTake app which automatically reconciles it with the stock available in the POS books/inventory and finds out the discrepancy.
What is GoSure StockTake?
GoSure is a stock-taking mobile application that, along with Gofrugal POS, helps you perform accurate and easy stock-taking on the go without interrupting billing operations and ensuring 100% complete inventory control. It removes your recurring nightmare of having to do a year-end stock audit. It’s simple to comprehend, easy to execute, and meticulous to boot. It doesn’t elaborate on staff or enormous time and is as easy as saying A B C.
Things to consider before performing a stock audit using an inaccurate manual process:
These are the stock audit requirements to be considered before starting a stock audit in the manual method:
- Stock statements as per books
- Physical stock inventory
- Previous stock audited reports
- Purchase Invoices and sale invoices
- Stock register
- StockTake manager
- Trained employees to carry out stock audit
- Enough time without interruptions or nighttime
Things to consider before performing a stock audit using GoSure:
These are the stock audit requirements to be considered before starting a stock audit using GoSure:
- Physical stock
- POS reports
- Store staff and Inventory manager
- Right tools/devices with the updated versions of solutions
- Any time, even during store open hours
How GoSure help retail stores in Stock Audits?
- Frame a plan based on your and staff’s availability. It could be just an overnight affair or done over a few days, based on your comfort and convenience
- Impart a simple and quick training to your staff; even your not-so-trained support staff would be more than sufficient to do stock taking, believe us!
- Assign stock taker and inventory manager roles to concerned staff; you don’t need to assign a separate team or hire extra staff for this purpose
- Schedule category against a day it has to be done for each employee, and GoSure StockTake automatically assigns those categories on that day to them
- Assign stock take locations, with POS locations or create customized locations; no need to gather stocks in one place or to replenish them again in the gondola
- Take stock with the in-built scanner and update it in seconds. Stock takers will not know the stock in the inventory which makes them count what is there rather than what should be there
- Are some items without a barcode? Relax, the application allows you to update manually as well
- Mark damaged and wasted items as you do stock audit to avoid confusion and mismatch
Bingo! Your complete inventory will be under your complete control! With 100% accuracy. And with 100% peace of mind!
If you still harbour doubts about mismatches with your book stock, you don’t need to. Just export reports based on variance, stock take location, and measure discrepancies instantly rather than spending time in recounting as the application consolidates your data as and when stock entry is made. This way, you can spot missed products with pellucid reports, avoid pilferages and safeguard your investments with a simple stock audit procedure.
Didn’t we say stock-taking would be as easy as saying A B C!
