How to run a stock take

Setup

You can run a stock take by hand, keeping track of the products you have counted and the products you haven't on paper and then manually updating your inventory amounts.

However, this is time consuming and prone to errors. We've built Pimsical Stock Take to make running stock takes a breeze.

To run a stock take with Pimsical Stock Take, you'll need the following:

1. Setup Shopify POS for your retail store.
2. Installed Pimsical Stock Take on your Shopify store.
3. Added Pimsical Stock Take to your Shopify POS homescreen.

Running a stock take

A stock take or inventory count is the process of counting the inventory or stock you have in your store. To ensure you have accurate inventory levels and stock levels.

Firstly, you'll need to create a stock take. You can do this from either the Shopify Admin, or on your POS device.

You can then join the stock take on your POS device, this will allow you to scan products and count your inventory. On your POS device, open the Pimsical Stock Take app, click on the stock take you would like to join. You will either be taken directly to the scanner or have the option to Join stock take, depending on how the stock take was set up.

If you have a larger team or store, you can also join the stock take on multiple devices, so you can have multiple people counting at the same time. You may want to split your store into sections and have a team member count each section.

Once you've finished counting, you can then end and action the stock take. This will then update your inventory levels in Shopify.

Stock take tips

Counting

When setting up the stock take, you can choose to require every product to be scanned or allow the team to manually set the number of products they have. Scanning every product ensures accuracy, however it can be slower than letting the team manually set the number of products they have.

We would recommend always scanning every product even if you're in a rush to reduce mistakes and ensure accuracy. However you can choose what works best for you and your team.

Permissions

You can also choose to allow your team to end and action the stock take from thier POS device. This can be useful if you have multiple stores or store managers who you want to control the stock take process. Or you can limit it to just those with access to the Shopify Admin.

Ending and Actioning

Once you've finished counting, you can then end and action the stock take. This will then update your inventory levels in Shopify. We would recommend ensuring all the team have finished counting before ending and actioning the stock take. You can view the progress and current counts from the Shopify Admin or on your POS device, so you can see how many products have been counted before you end and action the stock take.

Frequency

We would recommend periodically running stock takes to ensure you have accurate inventory levels. How often you run stock takes will depend on your business and how often you want to count your inventory.

You do not need to run a full stock take every time, you can also run a partial stock take. Whether this is adding new inbound inventory to your store, removing damaged or expired inventory or just counting a section of your store.

Barcodes

You can scan products using the camera on your phone or a physical scanner connected to your POS device.

Your products in Shopify must have unique barcodes to be able to scan them in. If you have products without barcodes, you can add them to Shopify and print your own barcodes.

Contact Us

Got any questions about getting ready for retail with Shopify? Get in touch, we would love to chat!