Stock control

Knowing, at any moment, what you have, where it is and when you need more means you neither run out of what sells nor bury cash in what doesn't. It covers counting what arrives, recording what leaves, checking the numbers against the shelf and deciding when to reorder. All of that together is called stock control, or inventory control.

Small businesses usually start with a spreadsheet, and it works until the stock sits in more than one place or more than one person touches it. The signs you have outgrown it are familiar: the sheet disagrees with the shelf, you sell something you don't have, or you reorder too late because nobody saw the level drop.

Good stock control rests on three habits: record every movement when it happens, count regularly (see stock take) and set a reorder level for each product, so the decision to order is not a guess.