Newsagents who do not track stock on hand with their newsagency software are more likely to experience employee theft in my experience.
The most common excuse is that newsagents don’t have the time to manage stock. If managing stock reduced the cost of theft by, say, $10,000 a year, would you find the time.
My $10,000 figure is considerably lower than the cost of theft in an average size newsagency. So, the benefits of managing stock properly and professional are considerable.
I can’t think of any reasonable excuse for newsagents not managing inventory using their software. Bo not tracking stock on hand:
- Theft by employees is easier.
- Theft by customers is easier.
- Ordering is more time consuming.
- More ordering mistakes are made.
- Suppliers can more easily dupe you.
- The quality of business decisions is poorer.
- Your newsagency is harder to sell due to inaccurate business performance data.
So, the real question is – what is it worth to turn these situations round? More than the cost of implementing management processes to ensure appropriate controls on inventory on hand data.
We demonstrate our professionalism as retailers in part by the way we manage business data.
Maintaining accurate business data is easy once you have established your business processes. I’d encourage all newsagents to do this. Your business and the channel will benefit as a result.
In the past week I have started to record and list the activites I do using Tower reports, in order to get myself into a routine. I thought if I listed here what I do, others may let me know what they do and why, so I can get better at this.
Tobacco – I stock-take once every week – print the form, get someone to count it all, highlight in orange any numbers they change, put the report on my desk. I run the stock re-order report every day from my back office desk, just to see how the
sales are going and keep the max-mins up to date. Once the min order value is met, I order (averages once a week).
Drinks (not milk) – I run the stock re-order report as above, a Rep visits once a fortnight to order. I let him do his thing BUT he reports to me and we go through his order together before I allow it. Once again max-mins are an issue because of seasons. I get a stock-take done at least once a month, sometimes more often. We write-off the out of dates and attempt to scan all stock accurately – I’m happy with this in general.
Stationery: I use the newest invoice as a tool to stocktake. In general, as an item is arrived, and the new stock added to the shelves, the updated count is checked and corrected if needed. Any discrepancy is highlighted, so when the paperwork hits my desk, I can chose to look at a department or group of items in detail if needed. I stock-take all year, department by department, but do all again in May/June, rarely have any nasty surpises. I always check the re-order report and do the stationery order along with the GNS rep, checking stock on hand as we go. I often say no, won’t order that just yet, we order most weeks.
Magazines. The stock discrepancy report for each recall week is heaven. I search for all that stock – find it 99% of the time. I am often up or down one weekly magazine, mostly the quantities balance themselves out. At the moment I have no concerns re mags being shoplifted, eg for a couple of months I was losing one Art Almanac, since I don’t routinely sell one anyway, I moved them but told the staff where they were in case a customer wanted one. Now they are back with the Art mags but I haven’t had one “disappear” for a while !
Sorry this is long but I wondered what everybody else does that I am missing out on.