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Many shops start the same way: products in an Excel sheet, stock in a notebook, sales on the till. At first it works. Then there are a few hundred products and two or three people behind the counter, and at the end of the month nobody knows for sure what was sold and what is left on the shelves.
Moving to a retail system is not a big leap if you prepare. Here is what is worth doing before the first sale in the new system.
1. Clean up the catalogue
The catalogue is the foundation: a wrong catalogue means wrong stock and wrong reports.
- One product, one line. Spreadsheets often hold the same product twice under slightly different names ("Milk 3.2% 1L" and "Milk 1 litre 3,2"). Find the duplicates and merge them.
- Separate the variants. The same shoe in several sizes, or the same drink in several volumes, is one product with variants - not ten separate products.
- A code and a barcode for every variant. If the product has a manufacturer's barcode, record it. If it does not, decide how you will label it with your own code.
- The unit. Piece, kilogram, litre, box - one per product, and the one you actually sell it in.
A good test: if two people on your staff call the same product by different names, the catalogue is not ready yet.
2. Prices and cost
Record the selling price of every variant. If you charge different customers differently (retail, wholesale), set those up as price lists rather than extra columns in the same sheet.
Cost price is what you paid for the product. Without it a system can show you sales, but not profit. If you do not know the exact cost of every item, start from the last delivery price; the next goods receipts will correct it.
3. Suppliers
List your suppliers: name, tax number, contact. You need it so that every goods receipt is tied to a supplier, and later you can see what you bought from whom, and at what price.
4. Opening stock: a stocktake
This is the most important step. A system can only work out what is left if it knows what you started with.
- Pick a day when the shop is closed or quiet.
- Count every product on the shelves and in the back room.
- Enter those numbers as the opening stock.
Do not copy the numbers from the notebook or the spreadsheet without counting. If they were right, you probably would not be looking for a system.
5. Staff and roles
Decide who can do what. A cashier sells and closes their own shift. The stock keeper receives deliveries. A return or a discount may need a senior person to approve it. Give everyone their own sign-in, not one shared password - that way you can always see who did what.
6. The switch-over day
- Pick a specific date. The start of a month is best, so your reports begin with a clean month.
- The day before, do the stocktake and enter the opening stock.
- From the first day, every sale goes through the new system only. Keeping the spreadsheet in parallel for a week is fine, but do not drag it out: two sources mean two different truths.
- At the end of the first week, compare the system's stock with what is actually there for a few products. If something does not match, it is far easier to find the cause now than in three months.
Summary
| What to prepare | Why |
|---|---|
| A clean catalogue with variants and barcodes | No duplicates, so stock is right |
| Prices and cost | You see profit, not just sales |
| A list of suppliers | Every goods receipt is tied to a supplier |
| A stocktake | The system starts from real numbers |
| Roles | Every action has someone responsible |
AM Commerce already has all of this: product cards with variants, prices, cost and barcodes, price lists, goods receipts from suppliers, stocktakes, and staff roles. Creating a shop is free - you can try it with your own catalogue.