Stock Take:

I got to learn the entire process of stock take at Pantaloons. Here the stock
take used to happen yearly and was also done in a very systematic way.
Generally it is done at the end of the financial year but here it is done once in
a month.
Stock take is a process where one physically needs to count the entire stock
within the store and tally the same with the system stock. What it does is
provide the business with an accurate idea of the number of stock items that
it owns.

Procedure:

Since stock take involves inventory it is important to understand the

difference between floor stock and back stock. Floor stock involves
inventory present at the displays or the floor itself whereas back stock
involves inventory at the ware house or at the back store.
Preparation of stock take should be happened well in advance. All the
staff members must be aware of their duties, shift and activities
assigned. Mostly a stock take is assigned after the store is closed for
the day but in our case we used to involve in the process during the
store time.
The layout of the store is needs to be prepared first. The layout should
show the exact no of fixtures and their positions in the each section
within the department. This will help the manager to know the no of
locations to be created. Based on the no of locations he will able to
decide the no of staff strength required.
Every section will be considered as one location and all the individual
fixtures within the section will be named as sub locations. Like mens
section is one location but there are several different sub sections like
mens casual, mens formal, mens accessories etc so these will be
termed as sub locations.
All the inventories are required to be checked for proper labels and
barcodes.
All the respective sales person of different brands or accessories are
required to take a note of no of inventories available at floor or displays
and no of inventories at back stores.
The defective pieces should be kept separate and brand wise for
verification.

Once the location id and labels are given to all the inventories then
scanning will be done. The scanning process will ensure that all the
inventories have correct barcodes and location id.
If any item did not match with their barcode or location id then it will
considered as INF (Item not found).
Then the manager is required to go through the reason behind INF and
replace it with correct barcode or location id.
This activity needs to be done with utmost care and with full
concentration.
The auditor takes a note of all the counting and required data for stock
take.

But here at pantaloons the main reason behind regular stock take was to
minimize the shrinkage. Most of thieves were caught before during
shrinkage and this will lead to a bad impression of the whole organization.
A regular stock take will lead to a better management of inventories and
identifies the damages and shrinkages.