Stock Control is probably the biggest nightmare retailers face. Hours spent counting stock and tabulating results. Often after hours working late at night, or even closing the store while stocktaking is done, resulting in loss of sales.

And then when the stocktake is done, there are hours involved in tabulating the results figuring out the losses, and even worse, when it is all finished, you don't know what caused the losses. You know the losses have happened. Or was there a problem with the last stocktake 6 months ago? Stock control is one of the main reasons why retailers install computerised Point of Sale systems. Yet while almost every type of POS software allows you to track stock, many of these POS vendors suggest that you don't... because it is too much work!

With SELLmatix that all changes. You can bring your stock under control without working extra hours and counting stock through the night. You won't need to close the doors to do your stocktakes. You won't need to hire extra staff to help you count. And most importantly of all, if you follow our guidelines, then when stock losses occur, you will know how they occurred, where the stock went and that means that you can take steps to stop further stock losses.

Picture yourself working shorter hours, yet knowing what stock you have on hand whenever you need to know. Think about what you can do with the money you save, and the direct increase in net profit from slashing your stock losses and what you can do with that revenue. And think of all the worry and stress you can eliminate through having proper control of your business.

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The way that SELLmatix solves stock control problems is so revolutionary that if we tried to just tell you about it, that you probably wouldn't believe what we said. So let's work through a practical example, using the demo system that you have installed, so that you can see for yourself what a difference this makes. Ready?

Good. Now run both POS and Control so that they are online, and just wait a moment or two so that Control has retrieved all transactions from the POS. You will see the "Task" for the terminal in Connection manager cycle through, and you will know it has collected all the transactions when it goes through "Checking Trans" and then moves on to "Checking Departments", without going through "Recvd Seq NNNN". This means there are no transactions waiting to be collected from POS.

OK. Now close Connection Manager and Order Manager (if it is open), and then go to the File Menu, Choose Utilities and then Clear Stocktake Variances. This clears old stocktake data from previous stocktakes. Once this is done, run Connection Manager again, and the choose Print->Inventory Reports->Stocktake Variances. You should see an empty report something like this.

Good. That means that everything has been cleared properly. Now go to Print->Inventory Reports->Stock On Hand and do a report for one of the departments, and you will see a report something like this.

It does not matter if your sample data is different to what we are using in this example, but do the exercise using a similar sequence of transactions.

Firstly, process a sale of one of the items that appears in the Stock On Hand Report. Tiger had 52 according to the stock on Hand report, so lets process a transaction to sell 2 of these.

Now, after selling these Tiger's, lets do a stock count for Tiger. In POS, Click on "Input Screen" and then 42 on the numeric display followed by "Stocktake". You will see that the top line of the Sale shows "42 Stocktake". Now act as if you were selling a Tiger. Navigate to the screen where the Tiger button is displayed, or barcode scan it or whatever. You will then see that the Sale shows something like this:-

Notice that the extended line total shown is the quantity times the selling price and in this case the unit price is 75. This would be the price if the items were being sold.

Now, let's do a stocktake for another item. This time, lets use Corona, and in this example we will enter a quantity of 20. Same keying sequence on the POS.

Input Screen
20 Stocktake
"Sell" the item.

Now, after doing the stocktake for Corona, lets sell 2 Coronas in the normal way and have a look at the results.

With Tiger, the original quantity on hand was recorded as 52. We sold 2. Then we entered a Stocktake Quantity of 42. But the sale was processed before the stock was counted, so the quantity of Stock on Hand should be 42. Correct?

With Corona, the original quantity on hand was 1. We entered a Stocktake Quantity of 20. Then we sold 2. But in this case, the sale was entered after the stock was counted so now, the quantity on hand should be 18. Correct?

Lets go back to Control. If you have been watching Connection Manager while these transactions have been processed, you will have seen a few "Recvd Seq NNNN" messages appear in Connection manager. If you had closed Connection Manager, then open it again with POS running, and wait for the transactions to come through.

Now lets run the report for Stock on hand for the same department.

and the Stocktake variance Report.

Please Note: If your sales postings don't deduct the sales quantity correctly, check Tools->General Settings in Control to make sure that inventory transactions are being tracked on this system. You should also check the Track Quantity flag for the items in Product Maintenance , as well as the department default setting for that department. There are a lot of different ways that you can configure whether to track inventory by product, department or terminal, and these need to be set correctly.

Think about what you have just done!
You have just done a stocktake while trading was taking place, and the quantities have been processed correctly.

The reason why retailers need to close the doors, or perform stocktakes outside normal trading hours using other POS systems, is that they have no way to tell if an item is sold before the stock was counted or afterwards. Therefore they can't count stock and trade at the same time.

But with SELLmatix, because you can enter stocktake quantities through the POS, you can trade and count stock at the same time.

The only thing you need to be aware of is a situation where a customer picks an item from the shelves and still has the item in their trolley when the count is performed, and they process the sale after the stocktake figure is entered.

Think about what this means for your business. You save money on overtime because stocktakes can be done during business hours when trading is slow, instead of after hours. You can easily do small stocktakes over a department instead of doing everything in the shop at the one time. This lets you monitor areas where problems are likely to occur, and identify losses when they happen.

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The first time that you do a stocktake, you learn very little. All the stocktake does is enter the right quantities into the system. But it does not give you any useful information to control stock losses, because you don't know what you should have in stock.

Later stocktakes serve two purposes:-

• They update the computer records with accurate stock figures
• The show you where you have stock discrepancies

Once you know where the stock variances are occurring, you can find out the reason and take steps where necessary to correct a problem. Not all stocktake variances indicate stock loss, and not all stock "loss" as shown on a stocktake variance report indicates a loss of money or theft. But many losses shown on a stocktake variance report do represent loss of money through breakage or theft.

The key issue is to identify what is happening with the stock and then take action where it is needed. To illustrate this, lets look back at the stocktake variance report generated above, and assume that the previous stocktake was entered correctly. Here is that report again.

The system thought that there were 52 Tiger in stock, but in actual fact, there were only 42 which means that 10 have gone missing since the last stocktake. The system also thought that there was 1 Corona in stock, when in fact there were 20, resulting in a net gain of 19.

Hmmm. Perhaps this store has been visited by the stock swellage genie that smuggles Corona into the store when nobody is looking! Could there be any other explanation? Well, yes. In fact any combination of the following can result in stock discrepancies:-

• shoplifting or theft by customers
• theft by staff
• breakage
• spoilage
• selling an item and recording it as something else. (barcode scanning eliminates this)
• forgetting to enter stock receipts
• recording stock receipts incorrectly
• counting errors in a stocktake
• freebies given away to customers
• items taken for the owner's personal consumption
• items taken for personal consumption by staff
• visits by the stock swellage genie

The question is "do these variances represent a stock loss?" And the problem is that you don't know. If the owner takes a bottle of Tiger from the refrigerator once a week without recording it, and it has been more than 2 months since the last stocktake, then there probably has been no stock loss of Tiger.

And the 19 Corona's that were found are clearly not a stock "loss". But if this kind of innocent error occurs, there may be other problems occurring as well, but they are hidden because they are mixed in with innocent errors making them harder to find.

If you are going to try and track inventory then you have to record everything that involves stock movement. No exceptions. The reason retailers have so much trouble with tracking inventory is that other system, it takes too much work. With SELLmatix recording all your stock movements is so easy that you will have thing under control in no time.

Record Stock Received
Recording Stock Received in SELLmatix POS is as easy as entering a sale or a stocktake quantity:-

1. Enter the Quantity
2. Press "Stock Received"
3. Select the item as if you were "selling" it. Barcode Scan, touch button or enter the PLU Number.

This takes less work than selling the item. Yes, we know that there are other things you might need to record, but the reason retailers have trouble with stock control is that most often, stock is delivered to the store but never gets entered into the system.

If you forget to pay the account for the goods delivered, the supplier will remind you. If you forget to enter record the stock received, then someone can steal that quantity of goods and you will never know, because it will never show up as a stock shortage.

Here is what really happened with the stocktake example above where there were 19 extra Coronas... A case of 24 Coronas was delivered but not recorded. Five were stolen. But when the owner did the stocktake, they thought they had 19 extras! That is what can happen if you forget to record stock received.

And that is all you need to do in SELLmatix to record stock received. If you run the Stock on Hand report again for the same department, this is what you see:-

If you scroll up, you will see that in the previous report there were 2 Chang in stock. We have just received 24, and now there are 26.

Record Known Shrinkage
Set up a customer account called "Shrinkage". When a bottle of drink is dropped and broken, "sell" the broken item to the Shrinkage account. This will keep your stock on hand figures accurate, and provide a record of how much breakage is occurring. You clean the mess on the floor. Don't leave a mess in your stock file so that when you do a stocktake you are puzzled about where the stock went.

Set up Owner, Staff and Complimentary Customer Accounts
Set up an account for the owner and anyone else that is entitled to take merchandise for their own consumption. And when they do take goods, "sell" the goods to that account. That way the stock figures will be accurate.

When the owner or manager give a customers a drink "on the house" have it "sold" to the "comp" account. Once again, it keeps the stock accurate and records how much is being given away.

We are not suggesting that owners and staff should not take merchandise for their own consumption or that occasional giveaways to customers should not be made. That is up to management to decide. What is important is that the stock movement is recorded correctly and that management knows how much merchandise is being used in this way.

Implement Gradually
You will make mistakes when you start to implement stock control. Everyone does.

But you will not learn of those mistakes until the next time you count your stock. That is when the variances will show of on the Stocktake variance Report.

When those mistakes appear, you need to find the cause if you are to gain any benefit from stock control.

If you count your entire stock now, and then do your next stocktake in 6 months, it will be impossible to find the cause of the discrepancies because of the time. As a result, you will be frustrated with the stock loss, but you won't learn why they are happening or be able to do anything to correct the problem.

If you are serious about taking control of your inventory, then instead you will:-

• start with one small department with only a few lines. Preferably less than 20.
• stocktake that department every day
• find the discrepancies. You can find a discrepancy that occurred in the last 24 hours.
• modify your operating procedure so that the discrepancies in that department stop happening.
• as discrepancies in that department are eliminated, increase the time interval between stocktakes on that department.
• when inventory tracking on that department is under control, start implementing inventory control on another department

With other POS systems, tracking stock is so difficult that many retailers give up. With SELLmatix, stocktakes are a breeze. You don't can do the count while trading in the store, without hiring extra staff or working out of trading hours. And entering the other transactions that are so complicated with other systems is so easy and fast you are almost finished before you start.

Your savings just from using the stock control features of SELLmatix more than cover the costs of implementing your new POS system. It is like getting all the other features for free. And with SELLmatix, you don't have to pay for everything up front. You can implement the system in stages adding parts as you go from the savings you make. If you haven't already done so, why not activate SELLmatix now and start enjoying the benefits of the system now. As little as $30 gets you started. No risk. No long term commitment. Activate Now!

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