What is stocktaking and why is it important? Stocktaking is the process of checking and recording your inventory. It plays a major part in your business’ workflow as the insights you gain from it allow you to make sound business decisions in terms of purchasing, production, and sales. If you’re a manufacturer, stocktake reports tell you when to purchase the goods needed to make your products. Similarly, retail business owners can use the stocktake records to identify dead stock and stockouts, resulting in bigger revenue. Businesses that sell consumable goods like restaurants and pharmacies also need to do regular stock control to avoid spoilage. By throwing away almost expired goods, it will be easier for you to ensure consumers’ safety and maintain your inventory’s health. Besides helping you discover stock issues, a stocktake also ensures that your business meets its targets. For example, as you identify that some stocks are about to expire, you can reduce their prices to avoid revenue loss. In short, any business owner with an inventory should conduct stocktaking periodically for optimal business performance.
How to do a stocktake? To ensure accurate results and get the full benefit of stocktaking, you need to conduct it properly. Each business generally has its own procedure and stocktaking habits. However, we can boil them down into the following steps. 1. Decide how often you want to conduct stocktaking. The process usually takes an entire day and lots of manpower to complete. Since it’s time and energy-consuming, you’d want to be strategic with the interval. If your products have an expiry date, you should do it continuously (monthly, weekly, or even daily). Otherwise, having it done annually or every half-year should suffice. 2. Appraise your inventory