There can be nothing more frustrating for a salon owner than seeing discarded colour tubes that are only half used, excess product being washed down the drain or not having the most popular treatments or retail products as they’re out of stock.
Having a good stock management process reduces waste and can have a hugely positive impact on your cashflow.
Zambezi Hair Salon in Wellington, NZ is a great example of a business that does stock management well.
Here is a summary of their process:
- Only one tube or bottle of product is open at a time in each product type.
- Each product box is white-stickered when it’s opened and staff members use their own colour pen to mark on the sticker the amount used and the amount remaining. This is done by percentage or fraction rather than weight as markers are already on most tubes.
- Client cards are also marked with the amount of product used and are billed for this amount. At the end of each day, client cards are checked against product used, as labelled, to make sure both sets of records match up. This closes the loop.
- Any product checked out of retail for professional use is clearly labelled for salon use making it easy to do a visual audit around the salon. Once empty, these bottles go in the stock bin to be counted.
- Once a week a complete stock take is done for both professional use and retail products by printing off the stock take report and checking actual against expected amounts. Stock take takes about one hour and is done by the same people each week (one person checks retail and another checks professional stock) to keep the process consistent.
- Big bottles such as shampoos are only checked out once they are empty which means they are counted as ‘one’ during stock take until they are finished.
- Once stock take is complete, the system is adjusted for variations and stock that is low is re-ordered using the auto-order by minimum function on Kitomba.
Tip: If you’ve ever duplicated stock by overlooking pending orders, you can now set preferences in Kitomba that take into account pending orders. Download the Managing Stock Mini-Guide for these tips and tricks.
