Counting the stockroom and the sales floor together

Packs of tea sit on the shelf and in the stockroom. People usually think about where to count them only when the total does not add up. It is normal in a shop for one item to be in two places: a few rows on the floor and boxes in the back. If you count the floor in the morning, the stockroom after lunch, and in between an assistant tops up the shelf from the back, the item is either counted twice or not at all. So the floor and the stockroom must be counted as one whole, at the same time.

Why the result gets muddled

Take an example. At 10:00 there are 12 packs of tea on the shelf and 48 in the stockroom, 60 in all. You count the floor: 12. At 11:30 an assistant takes 12 packs from the stockroom and refills the shelf. At 14:00 you count the stockroom: 36. You write down 12 + 36 = 48 packs, though there are really 60. A shortage of 12 packs appears in the records, yet nobody has lost anything.

Reverse the order, counting the stockroom first (48) and the floor second (24 after the refill), and the total is 72, so 12 packs show up as a "surplus". In both cases the cause is the same: the goods changed place during the count.

Three ways to do it

You can solve the problem in three ways; choose according to your resources:

1. Two teams count at the same time, one the floor and the other the stockroom. One person stands at the stockroom door and makes sure nothing is carried through.
2. The floor is topped up in advance, then movement between the floor and the stockroom is stopped. Nothing is moved until the count is finished.
3. If you cannot stop sales, every transfer is written on a "transfer slip" with the time and quantity. You then take them into account and adjust the total.

The first way is the most reliable and the third the most laborious. In a small shop the second is often enough: before the count you top up the floor and stop issuing from the stockroom. If there is a lot of stockroom stock and enough people, the first is handier. Use the third only when sales cannot be stopped. A transfer slip should carry four things: time, product code, quantity and who moved it. You then match each transfer against the times the zones were counted and adjust the total.

Packs and pieces

Stockroom goods usually sit in boxes, while on the floor they stand piece by piece. At the top of the count sheet or on the product line write something like "1 box = 12 pcs". Count open, part-filled boxes separately: "4 boxes + 5 pcs". The counter should not multiply the boxes; the coordinator or accountant does that afterwards. This way the counter makes no arithmetic mistakes and the same item is not recorded in two different units.

Putting the results together

After the count, the floor and stockroom results for each item are gathered on one line. A handy layout is: item, floor, stockroom, total, records, difference. For example, tea "A": floor 24, stockroom 36, total 60, records 60, difference zero. If your accounting system keeps the stockroom and floor separately, compare them separately too. If the balance is a single figure, compare the total with it. If a difference appears, first recheck both places, because the cause often hides there. Such a table is easy to keep in Excel: a simple formula adding the quantities from the floor and stockroom sheets by product code is enough.

The commonest mistakes

• goods on a trolley, in an aisle or by the till fall into no zone;
• the reserve behind the display case and under the counter is forgotten;
• samples, testers and display items are counted twice;
• returned or defective goods in the stockroom are added to ordinary stock;
• goods by the door that have not yet been received get counted.

Before the start, read this list aloud to the team and show them each place it mentions. A five-minute walk-round often saves hours of recounting.

Conclusion

Counting the floor and stockroom as one whole rather than separately cleans up the result: artificial shortages and surpluses disappear. The Pereuchet service assigns separate groups to the floor and the stockroom, working at the same time, rechecks the positions with discrepancies and hands over a final list assembled by item.