Introduction to Stocktaking

Stocktaking is the process of counting your stock and is crucial to businesses to maintain accurate inventory and pickup discrepancies. Shopfront offers a variety of ways you can stocktake products depending on the amount of stock you're going to stocktake, who will be performing it, and the level of reporting required upon completion.

Express Stocktakes

{plan}
Basic:true
Standard:true
Premium:true
{/plan}

Performing an express stocktake is fast and easy but doesn't provide a comprehensive discrepancy report as it doesn't have a concept of "starting" and "ending" a stocktake. Typically, this is used to perform spot-checks of stock on a mobile phone.

Since express stocktakes require you to always be connected to the internet, you can perform them while your store is open and trading.

{article}115003946652{/article}

Advanced Stocktakes

{plan}
Basic:false
Standard:true
Premium:true
{/plan}

Advanced stocktakes are the most common way of performing a stocktake and what is recommended when you're unsure.

You start a stocktake session, scan the products on any devices (we'd highly recommend using a mobile phone with a socket scanner) then when all people have finished scanning their sections mark the stocktake as complete and apply it.

Advanced stocktakes have the benefit that they work offline, have a detailed discrepancy report at the end and can be performed live while your store is trading.

{article}360001333472{/article}

External Stocktakes

{plan}
Basic:false
Standard:true
Premium:true
{/plan}

If you've contracted an external company to come in and perform the stocktake for you, you can import a CSV file that they provide back into Shopfront to automatically update your stock and receive a discrepancy report.

{note}Because the stocktake is done external to Shopfront, any sales that occur during the stocktake will need to be manually accounted for.{/note}

To start with, you'll want to export an external stocktaker file, which they'll then load into their system. Once they're completed, they'll need to provide you with a CSV file, which you can then import.

{article}34108517200909{/article}

Reporting

After completing a stocktake, or if you need to review past results, you can access various reports to analyse stock levels and discrepancies.

Both advanced and external stocktakes can be re-visited to view what occurred within the session, just head on back to the Stocktakes (Menu > Stock Management > Stocktake) or External Stocktakes (Menu > Stock Management > More > External Stocktake) page respectively.

Shopfront has a range of Inventory Reports (Menu > Reporting > Inventory Reports) available to use (such as viewing your entire stock file and inventory levels)

Additionally, there are a number of miscellaneous reports related to inventory (all of which can be found at Menu > Reporting > Miscellaneous Reports) such as the Inventory at Date report, Stocktaked Products report and the Inventory Movement report.