Today I want to talk about preparing for your stocktake. What you need to do on the day and what you need to get ready for us as stocktakers.

First thing is make sure you are on the premises.

That’s very important because if we’ve got questions we need to ask, we need you there to tap to ask questions. It also means at the end of when we produce our report on site, we can sit down with you go through it, make recommendations, highlight areas of concern, or areas that are doing well.

For a stock take we will need access to all your storage areas.

That includes your back bar, your cellar, your storage areas, as appropriate to whether we’re doing a food or a wet stock. If you’re having deliveries on the day, then we need to make sure that they’re kept separate from the stock. Because in effect what we do is when we come in, on the day we come in I mean we’re doing a stock as of close of business and not before.

Anything that’s delivered on the day keep to one side.

If it’s food and it’s frozen, obviously that will need to go into a freezer but make us aware that that is what came in.

What paperwork do we need?

Paperwork wise, we need to have all your delivery notes and the invoices for the period. Why do we want both? We need the invoices so that we get the correct cost price, and we need to delivery notes so that we can double-check that we’ve got all the invoices, but there’s also a chance that if you had a brewery delivery the day before we arrived, you might not have had that invoice yet, so we will use the the previous cost price you had.

We need your allowances, so whether you’re keeping them yourself or using one of our books, we need that up-to-date, filled out so that it’s there, have you check through. It’s always a good idea for you to check through it regularly you can see what your staff are writing down, so you keep on top of it.

We need your takings on the day.

Also we will need any cash receipts, so if you’ve got to go down to Tesco, Morrisons or anything to buy more spirits, or you have to food, you’ve got to go and do quick top up shop at your local supermarket, we will need those as well if we do in your food stock take.

We would rather have more information the day of the stock take than less.

Keep it tidy!

The other thing is to try and keep your storage areas tidy, if we’re go down into the cellar make it so that we can actually get to all the stock, you haven’t covered it. As I had recently, they’d done an event, so we’ve got bamboo screens and camo Nets over a load of the stock and we had to try to move all that to get it.

If we miss stock, your result is not going to be accurate.

So that you need to be preparing and what we need. So on the day we will need;

• All you paperwork for the period
• Your takings for the period
• Access to all your stock areas
• And most importantly keep the stock that is arriving that day separately and try to tell your staff not to stock it up until after we are finished.