How Do Grocery Stores Keep Track of Inventory (and How to Improve It) (2024)

Grocery inventory management boils down to keeping records of products that enter and exit the store. The outgoing products include sales, damaged items, and stock loss due to theft, human error, and spoilage. For businesses that deal with perishable products like grocery stores, keeping track of product flow is vital for making business decisions and managing the supply chain. This includes knowing the number of items that go out of the store through successful sales and deducting stock losses due to spoilage, theft, and human error.

The products are then recorded and imported into the inventory management system, in which employees can make adjustments regarding damaged items, returns, and expired goods. The system tracks the flow of each product from the moment it leaves the warehouse until it reaches the customers. A good business will integrate its point-of-sales systems with its inventory management software to monitor stock levels and arrange stock reordering.

During an inventory stock take, the number of physical goods in the warehouse gets compared to the stock levels recorded in the grocery inventory management system. The difference in the numbers is a loss of profit, which needs to be investigated if it occurs. The frequency of stocktake varies from store to store. Some grocery stores rely on the inventory management system to track product flow and stock levels, and their employees manually subtract the shrink. Other stores utilise stocktaking services or their own employees to do a physical count of their inventory. That said, some stores conduct monthly inventory stocktake while others do it annually.

Doing regular inventory stocktakes improves the accuracy of the business’s financial reporting. It gives insights into existing inventory issues that cause losses and eliminates stock discrepancies affecting decision-making. Grocery stocktaking also ensures the business has enough products to fulfill customer demand and provides excellent customer service. Most importantly, it is essential for proper supermarket management and the preparation of financial statements.

Inventory stocktake can take a toll on the store and its employees despite its importance. The counting process can take days to complete depending on the inventory size. The preparation and follow-up reporting also tend to last a week or more.

If you are running a grocery and experiencing this dilemma, consider checking out Advanced Stocktaking Services for innovative supermarket management solutions. We offer quality stocktaking services by a team of trained stocktakers with years of experience serving businesses in the retail, wholesale, and hospitality industries in Australia. We were the first to introduce barcode scanners into the Australian market for stocktaking services, making Advanced Stocktaking Services the leader of barcode stocktaking.

As part of our retail stocktaking services, we will integrate your inventory information into our cloud-based system. Using our system to monitor stock levels, you get a better insight into day-to-day sales and dead stock across multiple warehouses. Any bottleneck in the inventory management system can be addressed promptly to minimise loss. Get in touch today.