With Black Friday two days away and December just around the corner, and with insights indicating that overall consumer spending will be down this festive season, retailers know that the lead up to Christmas is their key trading time and will outstrip any other time in the calendar when it comes to sales.

With this in mind, undertaking a full stocktake is critical ahead of this key trading time. If you don’t know what you have in store, or you don’t have enough of what you predict will be the big sellers this year, then you could potentially miss out to your competitors.

Maximise potential revenue

The main reason for conducting a stocktake is to ensure you can increase potential sales – if a customer is shopping online and a stock system shows your product as available when in reality isn’t, because your stock system is out of date, then you will lose that sale to someone else.

Easily keep on track of stock

As the store gets busier in the run up to Christmas, mistakes can be made in manual stock records. This can be avoided by carrying out a full stocktake before the busy period starts, which then also avoids missing out on potential sales.

And start again in January

Once Christmas is over, January is the time to re-evaluate and a thorough stock-take will help you plan for the year ahead and indicate key lines that need replenishing.