Stock takes in hospitality based businesses such as hotels, restaurants, clubs and pubs are best completed by working on one department or area of your premises at a time. You may decide to break up your stocktake by physical location in your business, or by supplier, or category.

With most POS systems you can perform a stocktake in several ways:

• 1./ Using a PDE scanner (Portable Data Entry) to scan and enter quantities, then connecting this back up to the system to stocktake automatically.
• 2./ Plugging a scanner into a laptop, remotely accessing the Main computer using Remote Desktop, and walking around the store scanning products and entering quantities.
• 3./ Using an RF (Radio Frequency) or Bluetooth scanner to walk around the shop scanning items, and having someone at the computer entering the quantities.
• 4./ Printing a stock listing sheet and writing down the quantities of each item, then entering them into the system.
• 5./ Taking items from the shelf to the computer and scanning them, then entering the quantity.

The key to stocktaking is to get your stock figures into the system as soon as possible after counting the stock, to eliminate a discrepancy between the time you counted and the time you entered that figure.
Stocktaking is required for accurate stock control and for running reorder reports to replenish stock in the retail business.

There are two types of stock takes available in almost any Point of Sale system – Normal, and Spot Stock takes.

Normal Stock takes. When performing a normal stocktake, you have the choice of whether to clear all of the quantities in chosen departments/categories or not. Setting the QOH to zero for the areas you are about to stocktake is recommended to ensure that the figures will be correct. It is best to clear the quantities, so that stock that you don’t scan into the stocktake (therefore you don’t have in stock) has its quantity set to zero.

Spot Stock takes. When performing a spot stocktake, the quantity on hand figures are not cleared first. As you scan items into the stocktake screen, the system will check the date of the last time this item was last counted, then compare that to the start date of this stocktake. If the item hasn’t been counted yet in the current stocktake, the quantity will be cleared and

replaced with the figure you enter. If the item has already been scanned in the current stocktake (for example, you have found more of the same item in the shop), the figure you enter will be added on top of the current quantity.

NOTE: Spot stock takes should not be used to stocktake your entire shop. It should only be used for checking a handful of items.

Good Inventory Management software gives you flexibility in handling stock takes to deliver the best outcome for the retail business.

Approach stock takes with the respect they deserve. The outcome will guide business decisions for months to come.