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Store Health AuditOrder the Store Health Audit
The audit is the door. One store, a fixed fee of R35,000, two to three weeks, findings in rand. This page is the whole deal: the process, what you get, what we need from you, the lane we work in, the terms and the order form. It is a working agreement between two businesses, written in plain language, not a legal contract drafted by an attorney. If you want yours to look at it before you submit, that is sensible, download it below and we will wait. Read it once and you know everything.
How it works, step by step
- Complete the questionnaire on this page and submit. Your submission is your acceptance of the terms below, the day it lands is your commencement date, and your booking is payable as set out in the terms. Nothing moves out of your account yet.
- We read every line before we speak to you, so the first call starts where it should, not at the beginning. We contact you within two working days to arrange access to your numbers.
- We connect your data and build the first version of your live dashboard, a standard build fed from your own database, typically up within a day or two of access being granted: your turnover, your departments, what is moving and what has stopped, on your own phone, without waiting for anyone to phone you with figures. The first 50% falls due at that live dashboard, and that payment is the booking of your audit. You pay nothing before you can see your own numbers working.
- The audit runs, two to three weeks from commencement. Findings reach you in pieces as they are proven, not in one book at the end, because three weeks is too short to find everything first and act afterwards. Whatever we find, you can act on in the same week. While the audit runs you have us in your corner: two calls a week, short written updates on the other days, questions answered, quick fixes handed over as they land. That handholding period is a deliverable of the audit itself, not a courtesy.
- The audit is presented: the findings, the plan and everything behind them, in one book. The remaining 50% is due on that date. If it is not paid immediately, it remains due and payable from that date. Everything is yours to keep whether we ever work together again or not.
- You choose the road, or no road at all. No lock-in past the audit.
What the audit covers
Your money: where your sales go, your real gross profit and how cash moves through the month. Your stock: how much cash sits on your shelves, what sells and what is dead weight you pay to hold. Your ledger: whether the figures your system shows you deserve trust. Your ordering: buying to demand or buying to habit, and what the gap costs weekly. Your leaks: shrinkage, waste, pricing errors and margin lost at the till. Everything tested against your own till and ledger data, nothing quoted to you until it has passed that test.
What you get, and keep
1. The live dashboard
A standard build fed from your own database, up within the first days and running right through the audit. It is a window on your business and our progress report to you in one place: you watch the store and you watch us working. It stays up after the audit, indefinitely, as long as the installations on your server that feed it are left undisturbed.
2. The handholding period
Direct access to us for the duration: two calls a week, one to report what has been found and one to ask what only you can answer, with short written updates in between. Interim findings and quick fixes handed over the week they are proven.
3. The findings
What is happening in your store, each finding stated in rand, with the arithmetic shown and the source named. A short read for your phone, the full findings for your desk and the working papers behind every figure.
4. The plan
What to do, in what order, ranked by what each move puts back in your pocket, with owners and dates against every action.
5. The book
The whole audit compiled into one document at the end: findings, plan, systems notes, the record of what was found and what was already acted on. It closes the audit, it is not the first time you see any of it.
All five are yours to keep, use and act on, whether or not you ever work with us again.
The lane. What we advise on, and what we do not
The mandate is one thing: turn the business around. Every recommendation is measured against that and nothing else.
We advise on where money goes into the business. Which stock to buy first, which lines to carry, which suppliers to protect, where margin leaks, what the range should be. The bias is stated openly: toward the trading business, toward turnover and toward margin. Paying the supplier who keeps your shelves full is a buying decision, so trade creditors sit inside the lane.
Your debt sits outside the lane and stays outside. We are not financiers, bankers or financial advisors. We will not tell you how to restructure a loan, who to settle with or how to raise money. What we will do is show you what the trading business can carry, honestly and in your own numbers, so you and the people qualified for those decisions can make them on real information. Also outside: tax, statutory accounting, labour law and legal opinion. For those, use a registered professional, and we gladly work alongside yours.
Permission. Nothing happens without yours
Nothing is done with your data or inside your business without your express permission first. That covers what we may copy from your system and what we may do with it, any new use of your data beyond what was agreed, any instruction reaching your staff (we advise you, you mandate them, we do not issue instructions in your business), any approach to a supplier, landlord, bank or other third party on your behalf, and any use of your business name anywhere. You may withdraw any permission at any time.
Two permissions make the audit work. Your submission of this page grants the first: permission to read and analyse the business data you share with us, read-only, for this audit. The second is a separate short authorisation letter, signed when we connect your dashboard: it lets us collect, each night, the backup copy your system already writes on its own. Nothing is installed on your machine, nothing changes on it and nothing is ever written back to your system. Not a price, not a stock figure, not a correction. Your database is read, never touched, and your tills are never slowed because collection happens hours after they stop.
What we need from you and your team
The audit fails without these, said plainly so there is no surprise later.
- Your people take it seriously. This is the one that decides whether any of it works. An action plan nobody implements returns nothing, and it will still have cost you the fee. Your manager and your buyers need to hear from you, not from us, that this is not optional.
- You back it publicly. If the floor believes you are only half behind it, they will wait it out. Half a mandate is worse than none.
- Somebody answers within a working day. Usually you or your manager. Name that person on the form.
- Documents arrive when asked for. Management accounts, supplier statements, a recent stock take, till reports, whatever exists. Photos of printed pages are fine. If something does not exist, say so. A missing report is a finding, not a failure.
- The authorisations above, when we ask for them.
- Honest answers, including uncomfortable ones. We will find what is there. Being told first is always cheaper.
The clock, in plain terms
Your commencement date is the day your submission lands, and the two to three week count to your delivered audit runs from that day. Delays on access, paperwork or answers do not pause the clock, they eat into it. The same goes for what we hand you during the handholding period: what you implement immediately starts paying immediately, what waits costs you. Move fast and the audit starts paying for itself before it is even delivered.
If a payment that has fallen due is withheld, the handholding stops until the account is right, and the clock keeps counting. It is your audit and your weeks, spend them well. If the timing of a payment is difficult, say so and we stagger it. That is a conversation, not a concession, and better had before than after.
The audit changes as we learn, the deal does not
We do not yet know everything about your business, and neither do you. That is the point of the work. Each finding changes what is worth doing next: a week on availability may show the real problem is buying. When that happens we say so and agree the new direction with you before following it. What never changes is the fee, the mandate and the lane. What changes is where the effort points.
What a number is worth
Numbers about the past are measurements from your own system, reconciled against your own reports, and we stand behind them. Numbers about the future are best estimates on the facts of the day, never a promise or a guarantee. Context moves: a competitor opens, a supplier stops, weather kills a weekend. So every projection comes with its assumptions written next to it, and when an assumption breaks we tell you the number changed rather than let you plan against it.
The terms
- Service: Store Health Audit, one store, fixed fee R35,000. Fixed means fixed, it does not move with the hours. No VAT is charged at present.
- Ordering: the audit is ordered by submitting this page, or by a verbal go-ahead, or by written email confirmation. Any of the three brings these terms into force, and the date of that order is the commencement date. Where the order is verbal or by email, this page is sent to you as the record of the terms.
- Payment: the audit is payable on ordering, in two halves. The first R17,500 falls due when the first version of your live dashboard is up, built from your own data, typically a day or two after access is granted. That payment is the booking of your audit. The remaining R17,500 falls due on the date the audit is ready and presented. If it is not paid immediately, it remains due and payable from that date.
- Timeline: two to three weeks from the commencement date.
- Handholding: consultant access, interim findings and quick fixes for the duration are a deliverable of the audit. Withheld due payment suspends this deliverable until settled. The timeline does not pause.
- The Virtual Retail Direction option: the Store Health Audit is a prerequisite of Virtual Retail Direction, direction is only sold on the back of a completed or running audit. Within 30 days of commencement you may indicate, agree or order Virtual Retail Direction (R25,000 a month). The audit’s second R17,500 is then reallocated to your first month of direction, which is the second month of the relationship. If you have already paid it, your first direction month reads as R17,500 paid upfront and the remaining R7,500 is due on the first of that month. If you have not yet paid it, it stands as a discount on the audit and the full R25,000 for the first direction month is due on the first of that month. Either way the total is the same: the audit plus your first month of direction comes to R42,500. If you stop at the audit, the balance is simply the balance and nothing else happens.
- The dashboard stays, indefinitely. The initial dashboard is a generic build, fed from your database. Whatever you decide after the audit, it stays up indefinitely at no further charge, on one condition: the installations on your server that feed it are not disrupted or deleted. No maintenance is guaranteed. If the feed breaks, the machine changes or the installations are removed, restoring it is new work by arrangement, not a standing obligation.
- Your data stays yours. Never sold, never shared, never shown to another retailer, never used to benchmark you to anyone by name. Want it deleted, it is deleted. Want it handed over, it is handed over.
- Confidentiality runs both ways. Neither side discusses the other’s business, terms or findings with anyone outside it without written permission. Naming you as a client anywhere requires your agreement first. A signed mutual confidentiality agreement is available on request, same day. Our methods and tools stay ours.
- The work is recorded. Every hour is logged on the day against what it produced. Ask for the log at any time and it is given without editing. The fee is fixed and the hours do not change it.
- Advisory basis: findings and rand figures are our best estimates from the data and access you provide, and depend on that data being accurate and complete. Where a gap limits us we say so plainly rather than guess.
- No guaranteed result. We do not guarantee a financial outcome. Results depend on execution, market conditions and factors outside anyone’s control.
- Not professional advice: Nothing in the audit is financial, legal, tax or accounting advice.
- We never touch your money. We do not access, move or change funds. We advise. You decide and you act.
- Agreement: your order, whether by submitting this page, by verbal go-ahead or by written email confirmation, is your acceptance of these terms and forms the working agreement between you and Social Brands Investments (Pty) Ltd, commencing on the date of that order. Keep the downloaded copy for your records.
After the audit: the road
Three options, and the plan works with all of them. You own it either way, that is deliberate, and it is why the audit is worth buying on its own. What the plan will not do is manage itself: a recovery plan in a folder returns nothing.
Do it yourself
Take the plan, run it with your own team.
Virtual Retail Direction
R25,000 a month, remote. The month-to-month work of pointing at the right thing, checking it happened and adjusting when the store or the town moves. Your database read every night with exception checks run before you are awake, weekly analytics, weekly direction calls with you and your managers, a monthly owner report in plain language. Your team executes, we direct. Month to month, billed on the first, thirty days notice either way, no lock-in. Recommended for three months, because a store does not turn in four weeks. Order it within 30 days of your audit’s commencement and the audit’s second R17,500 goes toward your first month, as set out in the terms above.
Full operational management
R100,000 a month, twelve month minimum. We run the turnaround for you, on the floor, ordering discipline and systems work included. Virtual Retail Direction is included.
Optional add-ons to either road, priced on enquiry: the module apps (Bloom for ordering, Root for suppliers, Stem for finance, Rhythm for people, Mark for pricing, Vigil for live monitoring) and custom-built applications where a tool will pay for itself. The clearest example is a production costing engine, a bill of materials for your butchery, bakery and deli, scoped after the audit shows where it earns its keep.
Decide all of this after the audit, on the findings, not now. Nothing about the credit should push the decision.
The questionnaire
This is the start of your audit, not admin. We read every line before we speak to you. About twenty minutes, no preparation needed. There are no wrong answers. Where you are not sure, give your best estimate or write “not sure”. Rough is fine. We would rather have your honest guess than a blank.