A stock count routine that takes 30 minutes a week

Most shop owners know they should count their stock. Most also put it off, because a full count feels like a whole Sunday gone. So the count happens once a year, or when something feels wrong, and by then the gap between the book and the shelf is too big to explain.

There is a better way. Instead of counting everything rarely, you count a small part often. Thirty minutes a week, the same day, the same way. Over a month you cover the whole shop, and you catch problems while they are still small enough to fix.

Why a small weekly count works better

A big yearly count tells you that you lost money. It cannot tell you when, where or how. If your records say 40 bags of rice and the store room has 31, a year later nobody remembers whether it was a delivery that came short, a sale that was never written down, or a bag that walked out the back door.

A weekly count shrinks the window. If last Monday the rice matched and this Monday it is three bags short, you only have seven days to think about. You can ask who was on duty, check the deliveries for that week and look at the sales. Small, recent gaps are easy to trace. Old, large gaps rarely are.

Split your stock into three groups

You do not need to count every item every week. Sort your products into three groups and count them on different rhythms.

• Group A, count every week: items that are expensive, small and easy to pocket, or that sell fast. In a phone accessories shop this is power banks, earphones and chargers. In a pharmacy it might be the costly medicines. In a provisions shop in Kumasi, it is often tins of milk, cooking oil and bags of rice.
• Group B, count every two weeks: steady sellers of medium value. Soap, sugar, biscuits, hair products in a salon.
• Group C, count once a month: slow, cheap or bulky items that rarely go missing. Brooms, buckets, large cartons that are hard to carry off.

Keep Group A to a list you can count in about 15 minutes. If the list grows too long, you are counting too much and the routine will die.

The 30-minute routine, step by step

1. Pick a fixed time. Early morning before you open, or the quietest hour of your week. Monday at 7am works for many shops. The same time every week makes it a habit.
2. Print or open your count list. Product name, the quantity your records say, and an empty column for what you find. Do not look at the expected figure while counting if you can help it, so you count what is really there.
3. Count shelf by shelf, left to right. Finish one shelf before moving on. Include the store room and any stock in the car or at a second location.
4. Write the count, then compare. Only after the count is written do you compare it with your records.
5. Recount anything that differs. Many differences are counting mistakes. Count the item again, ideally with a second person.
6. Record the adjustment with a reason. Damaged, expired, missing, counting error, found extra. Never just change the number quietly.

A worked example

Here is what one Monday count might look like for the Group A list of a small provisions shop.

The net loss this week is GH₵ 202 (minus 190, minus 30, plus 18). The rice is the one to chase first, because it is the biggest value. The one extra tin of sardines is also worth a look: a "found" item often means a sale that was recorded against the wrong product, which could be hiding a gap somewhere else.

What to do when the numbers do not match

Do not jump to theft. In most small shops, gaps come from a short list of ordinary causes:

• Unrecorded sales. A busy afternoon, a sale rung up as "miscellaneous", or a family member who took something and forgot to say.
• Deliveries not checked. The supplier's invoice says 25 bags, the van dropped 23, and nobody counted at the door.
• Damage and expiry. A burst bag of sugar thrown away without a note.
• Wrong unit. Selling by the piece but receiving by the carton, and the two not being converted correctly.

After a few weeks your reasons will show patterns. If "delivery short" keeps coming up, start counting every delivery before the driver leaves. If gaps always appear on the same staff member's shift, you have a quiet conversation to have, backed by facts.

Keeping records that make counting easy

A count is only useful if the "records say" column is right. That depends on two habits: every sale is recorded, and every bit of new stock comes in through a recorded purchase. If either is skipped, your expected figures drift and the weekly count becomes guesswork.

In Snnel, stock goes up through purchases and down through sales, and any other change goes through a stock adjustment that asks for a reason. That gives you a clean history for each product, so when the Monday count shows a gap you can see every movement since the last count. The stock report can be downloaded as PDF or Excel to use as your count sheet. If you want to tighten your wider records too, read Bookkeeping for small shops: the five records that matter.

Make it stick

A few things help the routine last:

• Put it in your phone calendar as a weekly reminder.
• Keep last week's sheet. Comparing week to week shows whether things are getting better.
• Once a quarter, do a full count of everything to check that your groups are still right.

Once your counts are reliable, you can also use them to decide when to reorder. Our guide Never run out of your best sellers shows how.

Start this Monday with just ten items. Thirty minutes is enough to begin.