Using Inventory for a Profitable Christmas

Making sure your Inventory Module works for you during the Christmas and holiday period can be imperative in making the heavy lifting of the silly season easier and ultimately more profitable.

During the party and holiday period, venues will shift a serious amount of stock from their delivery door to the hands of their clients that are drinking and eating three times the amount they would in any other period of the year.

You don’t need us to tell you about how crazy the season can be in terms of staff and client management. The added pressure of functions, staffing and supply difficulties can be challenging.

When there’s not a lot of time for administration, your stocktake time becomes really valuable. Our pro Impos users have put together a bit of advice to make your holiday time a little more stress free.

1. Disable any defunct products.  While the Impos inventory system won’t allow you to delete a stock item, it will allow you to disable the item. Once you have pressed the disable checkbox, the item will be disconnected from any Front Office Items and subsequently will not decrement any erroneous amounts.

2. Check your levels are entered correctly. This may sound really straightforward, however it’s one of the major issues in so many stocktakes. It’s really important to check over all stock items and make sure that they are not only set to decrement the correct amount and the correct measurement.

3. Invest in staff training. Having more than one manager or even a senior staff member capable of stocktaking is imperative at a time when staff are working long hours and a workload needs to be shared.

4. Handle any cashing up variances before stocktake. Once you synchronise your stock data, you’re unable to make any retrospective changes to transactions before the sync time. It’s important to adjust any incorrect payments or make refunds to avoid running into errors later in your accounting.

5. Have a routine but don’t let it become routine. Having a checklist of actions to be completed for your stocktake is a good idea. Running your count in a different order each time is a better idea. After becoming familiar with our surroundings we take things for granted – that a box will be there each time and it hasn’t been moved, or that nobody orders the Gamay. A fresh track will cast a fresh set of eyes on your stock to be sure that all stock is accounted for.

Overall, a bit of time invested in harnessing your Impos inventory system will prevent further time spent on rectifying errors within the system. Many hands will make lighter work, particularly at a time when staff can be spread thin to cover as much of the seasonal rush as possible.