Logging deliveries
What comes into the store must go into the software.
Why it matters
Logging a delivery is the moment your book stock learns that goods have arrived. If it isn’t done, the item is on the shelf but the software doesn’t know: at the stocktake, you find more than expected. If it’s logged for a quantity that never arrived, it’s the opposite: some are missing. It’s often the first source of shrinkage, and the easiest to fix.
What often happens
The parcel put away, never logged. The team stocks the shelves, the logging waits, then is forgotten.
Logging from the delivery note. Quantities are typed from the note without opening the boxes. What was missing from the parcel is now missing from the stock.
Late logging. Done after the stocktake: the item was counted, but it wasn’t yet in the book stock.
What wasn’t ordered. A supplier delivers an extra item, or one in place of another. And sometimes an ordered item never comes.
What to do
Log everything, on time. Each delivery is logged the day it arrives, and all of them before the stocktake.
Count the box, not the delivery note. The quantity logged is the one in front of you.
Check the logging. A second person reviews, at least the large parcels and the highest-value items.
Report discrepancies. What wasn’t ordered, or what is missing, goes back to the supplier as a claim.