The Store Data Health Checklist

How to use this. Answer yes or no. Do it honestly, in the store, not from memory. Every no is a place your numbers are guessing, and every guess feeds your orders. Fifteen or more yes answers: your data is ahead of most independents. Ten to fourteen: the ledger needs a programme, not a patch. Below ten: stop trusting reports until the foundations are fixed. Your instinct is currently beating your system, which is why everything feels like firefighting.

Sales data

1. Do yesterday’s till totals reach you every morning without you asking anyone?
2. Do you compare weeks against the same week of the pay cycle, never against last week blindly?
3. Could you name your twenty highest-turnover lines from a report, and would the floor agree?
4. When a line stops selling, does anything in your business notice within a week?

Stock claims

5. Pick five big-value lines on the stock report. Does the shelf plus stockroom count match the screen within a unit or two?
6. Is every negative stock figure in the business explained, or at least being worked?
7. Do quiet lines with large stock claims get physically checked before anyone orders against them?
8. Would you bet a week’s profit on the accuracy of your top ten stock claims?

Receiving

9. Is every delivery captured against the exact product codes on the invoice, same day?
10. Do case sizes and pack sizes get checked at capture, not discovered at stocktake?
11. When receipts and sales disagree on a line for the second time, does someone chase the movement rather than correct the number?

Counting

12. Does somebody count something every single trading day?
13. Are counts chosen by value and doubt, rather than by whatever aisle is convenient?
14. Are made-in-store departments counted by their own rules, instead of being forced through barcode arithmetic?
15. After a count corrects the system, does anyone ask why the system was wrong?

Costs and capital

16. Are unit costs on your top hundred lines current, checked against recent invoices?
17. Would a case cost captured as a unit cost be caught in your business within a month?
18. Do you know what share of your stock value sold nothing in the last quarter?
19. Do deposit lines, crates and returnables live on their own codes, reconciled and never zeroed?
20. If a report and the floor disagree, does your team believe the floor and fix the report?

What next. If this guide found problems, the Store Health Audit quantifies them in rand and hands you the plan. If it found none, your store is rarer than you think.