How to: Stocktake

Good inventory management is essential to running a successful business, and it’s one of the most important responsibilities of a manager. But although the task of conducting a stocktake can often feel like a burden, the benefits for your business are irrefutable - particularly when major discrepancies are found and ultimately rectified.

Awkward or no software can result in frequent errors and make this process even more tedious and time-consuming, but Epos Now have the perfect solution. Our stock control system allows for an effortless stocktake, with the software doing most of the work for you. Follow our simple step-by-step guide to take the stress out of your stocktake.

How to complete a stocktake

• Open the menu bar, go to ‘Stock’ and then ‘Stocktake’.
• Use the search bar, a product list, or the quick scan feature and your barcode scanner to find or add products
• The ‘expected stock’ will show the amount you should have based on sales, and actual stock is entered in the ‘actual stock’ field
• If you’re working with liquids, rather than having to figure out how many ml are left you can tick ‘show as decimal’ and the system will figure out the amount for you
• If actual stock is the same as expected stock, click on the value under expected stock and this will automatically transfer over and from here you can also + or - to show your actual stock
• Set reason to ‘stocktake’ and apply to all using buttons under the search bar
• If you’re working from a list and there is a missing product, search for the product in the search bar, click it and it will add to your list or if you have hundreds of items in your list, rather than scrolling you find them you can search for them
• Click ‘Save as draft’ to continue your stocktake later
• Click ‘Review stocktake’ to go to the review page
• This page shows you the total number of items counted, total number of discrepancies, total correct items and total uncounted
• If you don’t have any of the uncounted products in stock, click ‘set uncounted to zero’ and confirm in the pop-up
• If you know they won’t be coming back in stock you can remove them from your list
• Go back to ‘all items’ where you can choose to print your stocktake or go straight to ‘complete stocktake’

And your stocktake is complete!

You can also choose to do a ‘blind stocktake’ which sets a permission in the back office where certain staff members are unable to view the expected stock to prevent items not actually being counted.