As a grocery store owner, there’s no task more essential to the success of your business than managing your inventory.
Accurate inventory management keeps the right products on the shelves for your customers, prevents perishable items from being wasted, and ensures that your costs are as low as possible.
Your grocery store’s point of sale (POS) system is an important puzzle piece in the inventory management equation, but sometimes, the number of products you have on the shelves doesn’t match your records.
That’s where physical inventory counts come in.
In this blog, we’ll reveal how often grocery stores do inventory, strategies for physically checking inventory, and how you can craft your own inventory management strategy.
How Often Do Grocery Stores Do Inventory?
A general rule of thumb among most retailers is to do physical inventory checks once a month, but the more thorough answer is: it depends.
The size of your grocery store, the types of products you stock, and the turnover rates of your items all influence how often you should conduct physical inventory checks. For example, a large grocery store selling mostly perishable items will likely need to check inventory more often than a specialty market selling higher-value, shelf-stable goods.
Additionally, there are several strategies that grocery stores use to count inventory — all designed to be used at different cadences.
Physical Inventory Strategies
To begin to answer the question of how often your grocery store should do inventory, you need to decide how you want to check your inventory.
Some strategies require more effort than others but provide a more complete picture of your stock. Others are quicker and easier to work into your day-to-day operations, but may not be as in-depth.
- Comprehensive Inventory Count: This is the most thorough way you can check your grocery store’s inventory. It generally involves closing down the store for a day and having your entire staff on hand to manually count each item. Since this is such an extensive effort, it’s usually only undertaken annually.
- Cycle Counting: In this strategy, your staff cycles through which types of products to count, spreading out the effort over the week. For example, on Mondays they would count all dairy products, Tuesdays all canned goods, and so on.
- Spot Checking: This method involves randomly selecting certain items to count. Spot checks make sure that your overall inventory management strategy is effective and helps identify discrepancies early.
- ABC Analysis: ABC analysis helps you prioritize your efforts by dividing your inventory into three categories. 'A' items are your high-value products with a low sales frequency. 'B' items are moderate-value products with a moderate sales frequency, and 'C' items are low-value products with a high sales frequency. You may choose to manually count inventory for your ‘A’ items more frequently than ‘B’ or ‘C’ items.
How Often to Check Inventory in Your Grocery Store
To determine how often your grocery store should do inventory, you’ll need to decide what combination of methods will work best for your specific needs.
If you’ve never done a comprehensive inventory count, you may want to start there to see exactly what you have in stock. You can then decide if you want to implement a weekly cycle counting plan supplemented with spot checks, or create a more complex inventory system through ABC analysis.
Here are a few questions to get you started as you decide how often you should practice your inventory management strategy:
- Have you ever noticed any discrepancies between your POS data and your actual stock?
- How often do you receive new products, and how long do they usually sit on your shelves before being sold?
- Are there seasonal fluctuations in your sales that might require more frequent inventory checks?
- Have you encountered issues with shrinkage, spoilage, or theft that warrant more regular counts?
- Is the size of your grocery store manageable for frequent inventory counts, or will it disrupt daily operations?
- Do you have the necessary resources and staff to conduct regular physical inventories?
The Tools You Need For Grocery Store Inventory Management
While physical inventory checks are crucial for identifying discrepancies, your grocery store’s point of sale system is the backbone of your inventory management strategy.
Your grocery store POS should automatically update each time a customer makes a purchase, share low stock notifications when you’re close to running out of an item, and allow unlimited SKUs to make updating your inventory simple.
A POS with the right features makes it easy to manage inventory and identify any irregularities before they become a problem.
If you’re looking for a POS solution with robust inventory management features, schedule a FREE demo today to learn how Markt POS can help.
