PHYSICALLY COUNT THEM OR ELSE…

Janet opened her big grocery shop in Chitungwiza from her farewell package. As someone who was a bit informed bought four POS (Point of Sale) machines to make the invoicing easy as she anticipated high traffic on her busy shop location.

The location proved busy and her daily sales were so encouraging. She had a total of 10 employees at her grocery wholesale outlet, four till operators, a store supervisor and some shop floor workers.

For the first five months the shop registered visible growth stock wise to an extend of hiring a nearby warehouse for stocking. The warehouse at some point got stocked to the brim and she couldn’t imagine herself winding up or getting out of business until the store supervisor and the warehouse guy teamed up on some evil act of siphoning stocks out of the warehouse for their own benefit. Janet operated the shop and even the warehouse without doing any stocktake and the two capitalised on the loophole or operational deficiency.

Her stocks eventually dried up as the team was taking more than Janet was replacing. The entire business lasted only two years and Janet found herself out of business.

Management of business is more than checking on the daily cash analysis, ordering right for the market and a good location. You must put in place enough INTERNAL CONTROLS to safeguard your valuable hard earned investment. Janet’s 20 year toil was wiped out due to some deficiencies (lack of deterrent internal controls).

You need to continuously count them to check whether the theoretical stock is tallying with the actual otherwise you’ll be shocked one day.