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.