What is a stocktake?

Your system says there are 24 bottles of oat milk. The shelf says 17. A stocktake is how you find out — and every cost figure you rely on, from food cost to gross profit, is only as good as the last one.

What a stocktake involves

1. Pick a quiet time — before opening or after close — so nothing moves while you count.
2. Count every item in the unit you buy and use it in, location by location.
3. Compare what you counted with what your records expected.
4. Investigate the differences, then correct the records.

Variance

The gap between expected and counted is the variance:

Variance = counted − expected

A negative variance — less on the shelf than expected — usually means waste that was not recorded, over-portioning, mistakes at delivery, or theft.

How often?

Many kitchens count weekly, or count their highest-value lines (meat, fish, spirits) weekly and everything else monthly. Shops often do a full count once or twice a year with regular spot checks between.

Why it matters

• It is the only way to get a true cost of goods sold for a period.
• Regular variance on the same item points straight at a problem.
• It keeps par levels and reordering honest.

Common mistakes

1. Counting while trading. Sales during the count make the numbers impossible to reconcile.
2. Mixing units. Counting a case as one when the records hold single bottles.
3. Correcting the records without asking why. The variance is the useful part.

Tracking it in DUMA

DUMA has stocktakes: count by location, see what was expected next to what you counted, and the stock records are updated from the count. The Stock usage report shows what was used, received and adjusted, item by item.