When a stock take isn’t really a stock take!

Happy Friday,

This week started with a heavy heart in our house.

My daughter was meant to be landing in India today. She had been selected as one of only 11 students from her school to attend a Round Square conference: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet students from around the world, participate in meaningful discussions, and then spend several days exploring Delhi with the group.

But due to the recent Middle East bombings and the instability around travel routes, the trip was cancelled at the last minute. She is absolutely heartbroken.

And as a parent, watching your child face that kind of disappointment is really tough. You want to fix it, make it better, change the outcome... but sometimes you simply can’t.

Life just doesn’t always go according to plan.

Interestingly, that feeling followed me into work this week too, just in a very different way.

Because this week we had a situation that made me realise how seriously (or not seriously) many businesses treat something incredibly important:

Stock take.

Let me ask you a few questions:

• How often do you take stock?
• On what day and at what time?
• Where is it recorded?
• Who checks the variances?

And most importantly... what do you do when the numbers don’t match?

This week reminded me how easy it is to do a “stock take” that isn’t actually a stock take at all.

On the 1st of the month, the usual count was done. However, the procedure outlined in the SOP wasn’t followed. People counted items, then left the room, came back later, and counted again. Stock take times were not respected. Different team members counted different items at different times.

Eventually we received the numbers at the end of the day.

The variances were huge.

So we asked for a recount.

The second count came back slightly better, but still incorrect.

We asked for a third count.

Again... improvement, but still numbers that didn’t make sense.

What was concerning was that every recount produced slightly different numbers. Items appeared, disappeared, or changed quantities each time. At that point, you don’t actually know which count is correct. Eventually we got on a video call with the team, asked them to physically look in specific cupboards and storage areas, and started investigating item by item.

And finally, we found the problem.

An invoice had never been entered into the system when the stock arrived.

Problem solved.

But here is the real lesson.

Most managers would have stopped after the first or second count and simply adjusted the variances in the system.

That is where businesses lose control.

Stock discrepancies are not just “numbers being off.” They represent:

• missing process
• poor controls
• potential theft
• unrecorded deliveries
• incorrect usage
• or simply sloppy management

A proper stock take must be:

✔ Done at a fixed time

✔ With no interruptions

✔ With clear responsibility for each area

✔ Recorded immediately

✔ Variances investigated, not adjusted away

And sometimes you have to recount four or five times until you get to the truth.

Because if you don’t know exactly what is happening with your stock, you don’t really know what is happening in your business.

One Action Step for This Week

Take 10 minutes today and ask yourself:

“Is our stock take procedure actually being followed… or are we just ticking the box?”

If you don’t have a clear system, a clear time, and a clear accountability process, it’s worth fixing now before the numbers start telling a very different story.

See you all next week.

Marisa