Stock is usually the biggest amount of money a shop has tied up. Too much stock means cash sitting on shelves; too little means lost sales and unhappy customers. Good stock control is not complicated. It comes down to a few habits applied consistently.
If the only way to know a stock level is to walk to the shelf and count, decisions get made on guesswork. When every sale and every supplier delivery is recorded in one system, stock levels update automatically and you can check any product from the counter, the office or your phone.
For each product you can't afford to run out of, decide the lowest quantity you're comfortable holding. That is your alert quantity. When stock falls below it, it's time to reorder. Base the number on how fast the item sells and how long your supplier takes to deliver. A product that sells 10 units a day with a 5-day delivery time needs at least 50 units on hand when you order.
Many stock errors come from deliveries that were never recorded, or were recorded with the wrong quantity. Create a purchase order when you order, then mark it received when goods arrive and check the quantities against the supplier's invoice. Your stock and your supplier balance stay accurate at the same time.
Customer returns, supplier returns and damaged items all change your stock. Record them as they happen rather than adjusting numbers at the end of the month, so you can see where losses come from.
Instead of one exhausting full count a year, count a few product categories each week and compare with the system. Small differences found early are easy to explain; large differences found at year-end are not. Record the adjustment so the system matches reality again.
A stock report sorted by sales shows which products haven't sold in weeks. Those items hold cash you could use elsewhere. Consider a promotion, a bundle or simply not reordering them.
If you have a second shop or a warehouse, keep stock separate for each location and record transfers between them. That way you know exactly where every item is, and you can move stock to where it sells instead of buying more.
KyeFlow updates stock with every sale, purchase, return and transfer, supports product variants, batches and expiry dates, and shows alerts for products running low. Stock reports by product and location help you decide what to reorder and what to clear.
