Pursuing a Passion

A Break from the Norm

You may work 50/60 hours a week with very little sleep, but the choice to break free from the grind of the typical “9-5” is so that you can make a proper living. Things will eventually settle and a more relaxed routine will follow allowing you the flexibility to spend more quality time with family and friends.

Income Potential

One of the main reasons you have decided to go solo is to earn more money for a better lifestyle. An unlimited income could be possible depending on the efforts and success of the venture. Working for a company, your salary is based on their opinions and decisions. Go get what you are truly worth!

A Good Idea

You’ve had a lightbulb above the head moment about your product/service and you see a gap in the market for what you do. That idea has got you to where you are now so keep positive. Look how far you’ve come already.

You have outgrown the nest

You have learned the ropes and you know everything there is to know in your chosen field. You feel like you are ready to fly but are constantly being held back. Being your own boss is something you’ve always wanted and you are now armed with the tools to succeed.

It’s easy to question yourself and allow self-doubt to creep in, but if we give ourselves some time to take a step back and take stock of the reasons why we started out in the first place, it will provide that extra boost to reenergise and go again!

Time, effort and tough decisions are involved in the recruitment process to ensure you are hiring the right people for the job. Our staff become trusted members of a team and the last thing we want to think is that the very same employees have the potential to steal from us. Unfortunately, theft in the workplace is more common than we would like to believe. Be it cold hard cash or products that you stock, employee theft is a real issue which cannot be overlooked.

A recent report by the British Retail Consortium discovered that employee theft now amounts to 6% of the value of crime committed against retailers, citing an average value of £1,031 per incident. Another worrying find was that on average, each theft committed by an employee costs four times that committed by a customer.

It’s not all doom and gloom as thankfully there are ways to surround yourself with staff you can trust. We’ve come up with a few tips to help clamp down on employee theft;

 CREATE A HAPPY WORKING ENVIRONMENT
A positive work environment will encourage employees to adhere to policies and procedures and act in the best interests of the business. If employees are happy in their roles, they will be much less likely to take from your business. Open lines of communication between management and staff and positive employee recognition will all help reduce internal theft.

 INSTALL CAMERAS
Staff will be much less likely to steal if they are aware that they are being watched. You don’t want to turn your business premises into the Big Brother house, but having cameras in areas such as storage rooms or loading areas should give you extra peace of mind. Good quality cameras which include high-definition video and facial recognition software are a must.

MONITOR WASTE REMOVAL
Not everything put in the bin is rubbish! Employees will often conceal stock/cash in the outgoing rubbish and retrieve it at a later stage outside the premises. A way around this problem would be to use clear rubbish bags, make sure all boxes are flattened before being binned and have all bins locked.

KNOW YOUR STAFF
It’s much easier to take from someone you don’t know very well, but it is much harder to steal from someone who you have a relationship with. You shouldn’t be best buddies with your employees but reaching a mutual respect is important.

With specific information about stock movements and stock on hand, you can then make schooled decisions about slow-moving items, theft, damaged stock and warehouse procedures.

Here are 5 Top Tips for a successful stocktake:

Ensure the stock room is clean and tidy and inventory items are clearly laid out

Attach labels to shelves to clearly identify different stock. If relevant, give stock counters clear guidance on the way they should count, example: start at the top shelf and work your way down, while working from left to right.

Plainly recognise what stock is owned by the business and where it is located

Segregate stock that’s been invoiced to a customer, but is still in the store room. Likewise, stock received but not yet recorded in the books should be distinguished.

Make sure that all stock held at varying locations or on are accounted for.

Count EVERYTHING

It might seem monotonous, but it’s much better to get a 100 percent accurate record the first time. Guess work will lead to doubts at the end of the stocktake, meaning you could find yourself starting al over again! Open boxes that are sealed– don’t assume that there will be 36 bottles in there…check for yourself.

Check the physical count against accounting records

Make a note about variances and follow up where necessary. Recheck any discrepancies

Update your records

Once the stock take has been completed, update the inventory records in your accounting package.

A well planned stocktake will result in minimal disruption, accurate inventory records and provides a basis for making informed business decisions.

As stated above, this is simply a beginners guide and a small insight into some of the procedures involved in making your stocktake a success. If you would prefer to leave it to the experts, contact Inn Stock Services today to begin your stress free stocktaking journey.

Tel: 07980 – 988338 or (028) 66388195

Email: info@innstockservices.com

Some of these job roles can’t be outsourced as your require full control of your baby-oh, I mean business. To you this is your baby. You are constantly trying to nurture your baby for the best possible growth yet sometimes obstacles fly into your face.

If you run a retail or hospitality business one such obstacle can be shrinkage. ‘Just where has that stock gone to that you swore you had? Was it theft? Maybe it wasn’t delivered in the first place?’ These are questions I am sure you have asked yourself in the last six months. The truth is there can be various reasons for shrinkage in a business but it is important to know these reasons and have a true breakdown.

That’s were we can help you to plan and conduct a stock take within your business that will provide you with 100% accurate finding’s. This will allow you to plan for the immediate future and delegate budgets to the right areas. 

Maybe you require a security guard, maybe you require all deliveries to be checked and signed for on a daily basis. Whatever it is you really need you will only find out through true stocktaking duties thus making you a profitable business.

You’ve all heard of the phrase ‘It’s time to take stock’, and at Inn Stock Services you can sit back and allow US to take stock for you, taking away the time, effort and stress of carrying out a stock take in your busy surroundings, allowing you to get on with the day to day running of your business. Get in touch today;

Tel: 07980 988 338 or +44 28 66388195

Email: info@innstockservices.com

Address: 47 Coa Chapel Road, Cavanalough, Ballinamallard, Co. Fermanagh BT94 2DW

This trend is meeting the demands of the customers…great! And the perception of course is that the bars are making a mint from their Mojitos. It’s true that cocktails can be a profitable area for pubs and clubs, but on my stock taking journey I’ve found bars which are losing out on potential profits when it comes to their cocktails.

510 Green Bottles

I’ll tell you about one such client of mine, a bar in Donegal which I work with on their stock taking. Like many of the bars I’ve described, this particular bar has seen a growth in cocktail sales. They didn’t even need to tell me this, as I can see from the stock they’re carrying and ordering that the once dusty bottles of what were traditionally seen as exotic liqueurs are now ordered more regularly, and in higher volumes than ever before. So, from 1 bottle of triple sec every six months or so, they’ve gone to 6 bottles a month. That’s an increase of 1,800%! And then there’s all the other bottles. In total, they’re probably bringing in an extra 510 bottles a year to cater for the cocktail market.

Great stuff – they’re capitalising on a trend which has great profit margins, right? Well, in theory, yes. But something was wrong. And I had my suspicions about what that could be, as alas, I’d seen it before. The staff were giving away free drink. Yes, really! Now I’m not talking about handing out free cocktails, or bagging bottles of liqueur to take home. This was more innocent than that. They were simply using the wrong measures in the cocktails. 35ml measures when it should be 25ml – that type of thing. Why? Well, they simply didn’t know better.

In this situation, a short conversation with the staff to get to the bottom of the issue, followed by a couple of hours of staff training has pretty much dealt with the problem.

What every bar should be asking themselves is, “are my staff doing the same?” You may have experienced bar staff, you may hire someone who has worked in bars for years. Is it safe to assume they know what measures to use? I’d say not. “Never assume anything” a wise man once told me, and I’d say the same to every bar owner and manager in the land. A quick conversation with your staff and a little bit of training could save you thousands. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at an example.

So, let’s say a bar is serving half a dozen cocktails each day, and on a Friday and Saturday that increases to 50 cocktails a night. There’s 130 cocktails each week. Probably doubled at least around Christmas time. So, ball park around 7,000 cocktails per year. That’s fairly conservative for many bars, who could be doing multiples of this, but let’s stick with the conservative figures.

Your typical cocktail will have 2-3 25ml shots of alcohol in them. We’ll go with 2.5 shots in this example. But we’ve got staff in this pub who haven’t been trained. They’ve been told what shots go into the cocktails, or they’re reading it off the cocktail menu which doesn’t specify the measure to be used, and they’ve never been told! So they’re merrily making cocktails using the 35ml measures.

That’s a free 25ml in each cocktail. And my calculator tells me that when they’re serving 7,000 cocktails each year, they’re giving away a whopping 250 bottles of spirits and liqueurs – yikes!

If one of these bottles costs £12, that’s a huge £3000.00 at cost (not to mention retail !!!) value given away simply because the bar owner or managers haven’t talked to their staff about using the right measurements in their cocktails.

Of course, each bar will be different, and this is just one example. But you get the picture, right? Think about how many cocktails you sell each week and do a little math of your own. Whatever you do, make a point of talking to your staff about this, or even send them this post to show them the potential impact this could be having on your business! And don’t forget, if you need help with your stock taking, or even your staff training in stock management, it’s what we do, so get in touch for a chat.