Tuesday 17 June 2008

Retail is detail...so they say.


Okay - retailing is a simple business and today we are going to talk about stocktaking.

This is when you count your whole store, so imagine the place you last did your groceries and walk with me through a stock take.

You know how much stock has come in on the wagon because you have a GRN (a goods received note) and it is loaded on to the till or 'price file'. You know how much you have sold, because your end of day report tells you so. Therefore, stock in minus sales, minus stock write offs , minus current warehouse holding equals the current holding of the 'live' store and it should be a given, somewhere close to a predictable amount from your paperwork. The difference is called stock loss or shrinkage and it is made up of all the stuff staff ate or customers stole. That's it. It is a measurable % of your holding and paying for it is costed in by the retailer and passed on to you well before you put the first item in the basket.

Doing a stock take is easy if you prep' it well and make sure people count logically.

We are doing our Stock take right now in our stores. In a typical store we have 80 fish tanks and to stock take fish, some poor fecker has to count them live. How daft is that? I would definitely make it up.

Check these little fellas out; they are very young catfish and some poor sod has to count them whilst they swim around well fast! Guaranteed lack of accuracy.

Mental.

8 comments:

scargosun said...

Too funny about the fish. We call it inventory and it is SO not fun.

BS5 Blogger said...

Yeah, it sucks! France-Italy live as I type. Is P 'working from home' ?

:-)

Anonymous said...

Once knew a professional stocktaker and he advised to photograph the tank and count the fish (any moving stock) on that...

Simple when you think about it.

Operations...

BS5 Blogger said...

Wanker!

:)

BS5 Blogger said...

But I am gonna nick your idea.

Suburbia said...

Can't you drug them to get them to stay still for a minute!!! (have just read W's comment but really photographing them is just a boring solution)
What about all those bugs you feed to the spiders and horrid things (that SS would like), do you have to count those or do they go in the 'someone /thing ate' them column?

BS5 Blogger said...

Hi Sub,

Live locusts are counted if it's a Wednesday but taken as completed through the supply chain by Thursday if they have been eaten by the tarantulas.

SS post follows - snapped a couple of spiders and lizards on my camera phone this week.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. Can't wait!

Sub