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Storekeeper Guide

Guide for storekeepers and stock controllers — receiving deliveries, capturing invoices, counts and recounts, the day book, transfers, and keeping ingredient links healthy.

As a storekeeper you are the person who decides whether the stock figures mean anything. Receive what actually arrived, capture the invoice while you have it, record losses with their real reason, and count when the shelf and the system disagree. Almost every downstream number — margin, food cost, what to reorder — depends on those four habits.

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Why your part matters more than it looks

Every cost figure in the business traces back to a delivery someone received. If a quantity is wrong, a unit is wrong, or a delivery was never booked in, the error does not stay in the stockroom — it becomes a wrong margin, a wrong recipe cost, and a reorder suggestion built on fiction.

Record what happened, not what tidies the screen

When stock is missing and you know why, record the reason — wastage, damage, theft. Using a count correction instead makes the number right and throws away the only information that would have told you how much you are losing, and to what.

Your daily work

How to Receive a Delivery (book in a delivery, goods arrived, receive stock)

The most consequential thing you do. Record what turned up, not what was ordered.

Required permission: Purchase order receive

  1. Go to Expenses → Purchases and open the purchase order for the delivery
  2. Choose Receive Goods
  3. Count what physically arrived and enter it under Receiving — the Variance column shows the difference against what was ordered
  4. Check the unit on each line matches how it was delivered — cases against cases, singles against singles
  5. Record Lot/Expiry where the product is tracked by batch
  6. Confirm the receipt

Result: Stock increases by what arrived, the cost is booked, and the product's average cost updates.

Note: If less arrived than was ordered, receive the short quantity and leave the rest open. Marking a short delivery complete turns it into an unexplained stock loss weeks later.

How to Capture the Supplier Invoice (photograph invoice, upload invoice, send invoice for processing)

Do it while the paperwork is in your hand, at the point of delivery.

Required permission: Document create

  1. Open Documents in the staff app
  2. Photograph the invoice flat and in focus. Use Add page for a multi-page invoice
  3. Add Notes if there is anything the person processing it should know
  4. Submit it

Result: The invoice enters the processing queue as Submitted, tagged with your name.

Note: You do not need to classify anything or know which account it hits — that is a separate, privileged step. Your job is that the invoice exists in the system and is legible.

How to Record Waste, Damage or Loss (write off stock, spoilage, broken stock, stock loss)

Record stock that is gone, with the reason that actually applies.

Required permission: Inventory adjust

  1. Open Day Book in the staff app, or go to Inventory & Products → Stock Day Book
  2. Find the product
  3. Enter the quantity lost under Wasted
  4. Choose the reason — spoilage, breakage, transit damage, water damage or theft
  5. Post the sheet when the day is done

Result: Stock reduces and the loss is booked to the account matching its type.

Note: Posting is safe to repeat. Correcting a posted day moves only the difference, so you can post mid-shift and add more later without double-counting.

How to Check a Product's Stock Quickly (how much do we have, stock check, scan product)

For a single question about a single product.

  1. Open Stock Check in the staff app
  2. Scan the barcode or search for the product
  3. Read the current stock

Result: You see what the system holds, without opening or affecting a count.

How to Count an Area (stocktake, physical count, recount)

Count what is there, and let a manager decide what the variances mean.

Required permission: Inventory count

  1. Open Recounts in the staff app and start a recount
  2. Work through the products, entering the quantity you physically counted
  3. Count what you see — do not adjust toward the system figure
  4. Submit the count when the area is done

Result: The recount goes to Awaiting Review with each line's variance calculated. A manager approves and posts it.

Note: Before starting, avoid receiving deliveries into the area being counted — stock arriving mid-count lands after you have passed that shelf and shows as a variance.

How to Send Stock to Another Outlet (transfer stock, send to branch, inter-BU transfer)

Move stock between business units so both sides stay right.

Required permission: Inventory transfer

  1. Go to Inventory & Products → Inter-BU Transfers
  2. Create a transfer to the destination business unit
  3. Add the products and quantities
  4. Dispatch it when the goods physically leave

Result: Stock leaves your unit and shows as In Transit until the receiving unit confirms it.

Note: Chase anything left In Transit for more than a day or two. Until it is received it belongs to neither shelf, and shows as a shortage at both ends.

If you work in a kitchen

When a delivery includes things recipes use, receipt is the moment to confirm how each product maps to a kitchen ingredient, and that the unit conversion is right. A 5kg block used in grams should convert at 5000 — a conversion out by a factor of a thousand is the most common cause of an absurd recipe cost. See Kitchen Stock.

Only confirm a match you are sure of. A confirmed wrong match produces a plausible but incorrect cost, which is far harder to notice than no cost at all.

Common questions

Stock did not go up after I received a delivery

Cause: The purchase may have been created but not received.

Fix: Check the purchase order status. Creating an order records what was asked for; only Receive Goods moves stock and books the cost.

The system will not let me receive the quantity delivered

Cause: You cannot receive more than was ordered.

Fix: Ask whoever raised the order to amend it to the quantity actually supplied, then receive. This keeps the order and the delivery consistent.

Should I record a loss as wastage or fix the count?

Cause: They record different things.

Fix: Wastage when you know what happened — spoiled, broken, stolen. A count fix only when the shelf and the system disagree and you genuinely do not know why.

I found a discrepancy — should I count the whole area?

Cause: Not necessarily.

Fix: Check the product’s stock movement history first. Often there is an obvious cause — a transfer never received, or a delivery booked to the wrong unit — and counting would hide it rather than fix it.

I posted the day book twice — is stock doubled?

Cause: Posting applies the difference, not the whole amount.

Fix: No. Re-posting an unchanged sheet does nothing. Check the product’s movement history to confirm — you will see one movement.