Moving your shop from a notebook to software

Plenty of good shops run on a notebook. It costs almost nothing, it needs no battery, and the owner knows exactly where everything is written. If your shop is small, you serve most customers yourself, and you can still tell at a glance what is running low, there is no emergency here.

The trouble starts when the shop gets ahead of the notebook. You can usually tell when it happens, because a few things begin to repeat.

• You run out of something you were sure you had, and only find out when a customer asks.
• A second person starts serving, and the notebook is either with them or with you, never both.
• Adding up a week of sales takes an evening, so you stop doing it.
• You cannot say which products make you the most money, only which ones feel busy.
• You take a day off and the shop slows to a crawl because the answers are all in your head.

None of these mean you did something wrong. They mean the shop has more moving parts than a page can hold. That is the moment software starts to pay for itself, and it is worth moving before the problems get expensive, not after.

If you are still deciding between a spreadsheet and an app, this comparison lays out the trade-offs. This guide assumes you have decided to move and want to do it without a mess.

It helps to be clear about what you are buying, so you judge the move by the right things. A good inventory tool does a few jobs better than paper, and the rest is detail.

• It does the subtraction. Every sale takes one off the count without anyone doing sums. This is the biggest gain, because manual updating is where notebooks fall behind.
• It answers questions fast. How many are left, what sold this week, what is low. These take seconds instead of an evening.
• It keeps a history. You can see when stock came in, went out and why, which is how you spot loss and slow sellers.
• It lets more than one person work. Two people can serve and receive stock without passing a book back and forth.
• It reminds you. You set a minimum, and you get told when stock crosses it, instead of relying on remembering to check.

What software cannot do is fix numbers that were wrong to begin with. If the notebook says 12 and the shelf holds 7, the software will happily say 12 as well. That is why the preparation below matters more than the switch itself.

Most failed switches fail here. People copy a messy notebook into a tidy system and are surprised that the system is messy too. A short clean-up first saves hours later.

1. Decide which products come across

   You do not need everything on day one. Pick your top 30 to 50 sellers, the ones that would hurt most to run out of. Leave the dusty corner for later. You can always add products as you go.

2. Fix the names

   Give every product one clear name with its size, such as "Cooking oil 1L" rather than "oil". If the notebook has two lines for the same thing, merge them. If one line covers two sizes, split it. Clear names are what let your staff find the right product in a hurry.

3. Write down the selling price

   Check each price against what you actually charge today, not what the notebook says from three price rises ago. A wrong price in the new system will be wrong on every sale.

4. Add cost where you know it

   If you know what you paid, write it next to the price. Cost is what lets software show profit. If you do not know a cost yet, leave it blank and fill it in the next time you buy. Do not guess.

5. Pick a rough minimum

   For each product, choose the quantity at which you would want to reorder. A rough number is fine. You can tighten it using the reorder point method once you have a few weeks of data.

The new system needs a starting number for every product, and that number has to come from the shelf, not the notebook. This is the one count that sets everything else, so it is worth doing carefully.

Pick a time when the shop is quiet: before opening, after closing, or a slow afternoon with someone else on the counter. Count every product you are bringing across, on the shelf and in the back room, and write the number down. Count twice for anything that looks off. If you want a method for doing this without shutting the doors, how to do a stock count covers it, and the printable stock count sheet gives you something to write on.

Then, and this is the important bit, stop trusting the notebook for those products. From this point the shelf count is the truth. If the two disagree, the shelf wins. Note the differences if you like, since they tell you how reliable the old system was, but do not carry them forward.

An example of what the count often shows

Here the notebook is out on three of five products. That is common, and it is not a reason to feel bad. It is a reason to be glad you counted before moving, because those wrong numbers are exactly what would have carried into the new system otherwise.

There are two ways to load products, and which is better depends on how many you have.

• Add them one at a time. For 50 products or fewer, this is quick and gives you a chance to look at each one. You usually need only a name, a price and a quantity to start.
• Import a list. For a few hundred, load a spreadsheet or CSV file. Look at the preview before you confirm, since a column in the wrong place is much easier to fix before the import than after.

If your products have barcodes, scanning them as you add stock can speed this up a lot, and it speeds up selling later too. See barcode scanning for how that works.

Whichever way you go, finish by checking a few products by hand. Pick five at random and compare the name, price and quantity in the system against your count sheet. If those five are right, the rest almost certainly are. If one is wrong, look for the pattern before you correct it.

Do not throw the notebook away on the first morning. For about a week, keep writing in it as usual and also ring up sales in the new system. It feels like double work, and it is, but it protects you in two ways.

First, it shows you whether the new numbers are right. At the end of each day, compare the sales total in the notebook with the total in the software. If they match, you can trust the software. If they do not, you have found a gap: a sale that was missed, a price entered wrongly, or a habit that needs changing, while the notebook is still there to check against.

Second, it takes the pressure off. Staff and owners both make slips in the first few days of anything new. Knowing the notebook still holds the record lets everyone relax and learn.

A daily check during the overlap week

On Monday the gap came from a couple of cash sales that were written down but never entered. By Tuesday the habit was in place. When you get two or three matching days in a row, you can retire the notebook for those products.

Software is only as accurate as the habits around it. Spend ten minutes with everyone who uses the till, and go over only what matters.

• Every sale goes through the system, even small ones and sales to people you know.
• If a customer returns something, it is recorded as a return, not deleted.
• If something is damaged, expired or taken, it is recorded with a reason, not quietly removed.
• Deliveries are entered the day they arrive, by the person who checked them.
• If a number looks wrong, say so. Do not fix it silently.

Decide who is allowed to see and change what. The person at the till rarely needs to see what you paid for things, and it is sensible to keep costs and profit for the owner. Many shops find that clear roles reduce arguments as well as errors.

Moving every product at once

A huge import feels productive and then turns into a pile of wrong numbers nobody wants to fix. Starting with your best sellers means the first thing you see in the new system is useful and right.

Copying the notebook's numbers instead of counting

The notebook was already drifting from the shelf. Copying it faithfully just preserves the drift. Count first.

Switching in the middle of a rush

The week before a holiday or the first day of a busy month is a poor time to learn a new till. Choose an ordinary week. You want to make mistakes when they are cheap.

Skipping the overlap

Dropping the notebook on day one removes your only way to check the new numbers. A week of double entry is a small price for confidence.

Leaving costs blank forever

It is fine to start without cost. It is not fine to never add it. Each time a delivery arrives, put the cost in. A few weeks later you can see which products actually earn their shelf space. If profit is the part that confuses you, read gross profit for shop owners.

Expecting the software to fix habits

If stock goes missing because deliveries are not checked, a new system will show you the loss more clearly, but it will not stop it. The software gives you a better view. Changing the routine is still your job.

• Choose your top 30 to 50 products to move first.
• Give each product one clear name with its size.
• Check every selling price against what you charge today.
• Add costs where you know them, and leave the rest blank.
• Set a rough minimum quantity for each product.
• Pick a quiet time and count every product you are moving.
• Treat the shelf count as the truth, and do not copy the notebook's numbers.
• Add the products one by one, or import a tidy list and check the preview.
• Check five products by hand against your count sheet.
• Run the notebook and the software side by side for about a week, comparing daily totals.
• Show everyone at the till the five habits above.
• Retire the notebook when several days in a row match, then add the next batch of products.

Shopkeepa is built so the switch is short. You can add a product with just a name, a price and a quantity, or bring a whole list in from a CSV or Excel file and look it over in a preview before anything is saved. If a product looks like one you already have, you get a duplicate warning.

After that, every sale takes stock off for you, and a rapid stock count lets you check the shelf against the system without shutting up shop. Shopkeepa is in development, and early access shops will help shape it. Read more about inventory tracking and the point of sale.