Ten minutes at the start of the week: your 'count hour'

On Monday morning you open the shop and you are not sure what is left on the shelves. Weekend sales were heavy, and your supplier will ring in a day or two to ask what you need. People think: "A full count takes a whole day." Such a day never turns up, so the count keeps slipping. The fix is the reverse: ten minutes every Monday, for the most important goods only. This "count hour" is so short that skipping it feels silly.

Why Monday, and why ten minutes

Sales peak at the weekend and Monday is usually calm. Most importantly, you count before you order from the supplier: knowing what is left, you neither overbuy nor run short. And ten minutes is so brief that "no time today" stops working as an excuse.

You do not count everything. The list holds 10–12 items: the fastest sellers, the most expensive ones and those customers keep asking about ("do you have it?"). A large share of a shop's turnover usually comes from just a few goods like these, so a mistake in them costs the most. One sack of rice short in a single week may be chance. Four weeks running is no longer chance, and the ten-minute count is what shows it.

Minute by minute

The sheet has four columns: item, expected balance, counted, difference.

1. Minute one: sheet, pen and a phone timer ready. Set the timer for ten minutes.
2. Minutes two to seven: walk from shelf to shelf, count each listed item and write it in the "counted" column. Twelve items leaves half a minute each.
3. Minutes eight and nine: work out the differences. Circle in red anything off by more than two pieces or more than 5 per cent.
4. Minute ten: write the order list and make one decision: which difference will have its cause found this week.

Finding the expected balance

The formula is simple: last Monday's count + deliveries during the week − sales in the notebook. An example: pasta in 500 g packs. Last Monday you counted 84 packs, 120 arrived during the week and the notebook shows 131 sold. Expected balance: 84 + 120 − 131 = 73. Today you count 69 on the shelf, a difference of −4.

Three questions are enough to find those four packs: were they put on another shelf, did a sale go unrecorded, were some opened as a sample or a gift? Very often the answer turns up the same day, while the event is fresh.

If you record sales in a till program or in 1C rather than a notebook, take the weekly sales figure from its report. If they are not recorded anywhere, leave the "expected" column empty for now and compare only with last week's count: even that gives a first indication.

Rotating slots

Besides the ten permanent items, add three to five "rotating" slots to the sheet, taken in turn from the rest of the list. With 120 other items and five a week, the whole range gets checked in 24 weeks, which is half a year. Mark the count date in the main list so you can see which item has gone unchecked for many weeks.

Keeping the habit

• Keep the day and time fixed: say Monday at 9:30, before opening.
• Print the sheets in advance or prepare four copies in the notebook.
• File each Monday's sheet in a folder called "Count hour". After four weeks you can see which items keep showing differences: that is where the trouble is.
• If a difference appears, do not quietly correct the number in the notebook. Cause first, correction second.

In the first week you may not fit into ten minutes, and that is normal: by the second or third week you remember where things are and it speeds up.

Common slips: counting while a customer waits, changing the list every week and postponing the count until after the order.

Conclusion

Ten minutes a week adds up to about nine hours a year: 52 × 10 = 520 minutes. In return you know the real state of your most important goods every week. If the shop is large, or you cannot find the time to set the habit up, the Sanab team can run one full count and prepare correct starting figures and a basis for the weekly list.