A simple way for a small shop to track stock
A kirana or a small retail pasal usually finds out an item is finished when a customer asks for it. The count lives in a notebook, a WhatsApp message to the supplier, or in the owner's head. That works while the catalogue is thirty lines. It stops working when the same oil is bought by the carton, sold by the litre, and reordered only after two people have already been turned away.
You do not need a warehouse system for this. You need a list you trust for the items that move.
What belongs on the list
Start with the items you would be embarrassed to be out of. For each one, write five things:
- The name a customer would use, not the supplier's code.
- The unit you sell in: piece, kg, litre, dozen, or bora. If you buy in one unit and sell in another, write the conversion once (one bora is 25 kg, one dozen is 12 pieces) and stop converting in your head at the counter.
- How many you have right now, in the selling unit.
- The selling price, in NPR.
- A reorder line: the quantity at which you call the supplier. For a fast mover that might be two days of sales. For something that sits, it can be one piece.
Group them only as far as it helps you find them: snacks, oil and ghee, household, and so on. A category is a shelf in the list, not a department in a company.
What to leave out on the first week
Do not open the shop by typing every flavour, every pack size, and every item that sold once last Dashain. A wrong complete list is worse than a short true one, because you will stop looking at it. Add a line the first time you buy it or the first time you sell it. Skip serial numbers, batch expiry, and a separate record for every godown until you actually have more than one place the goods sit. If you do keep stock in a godown as well as on the counter, that is a separate job: moving stock between the shop and the godown.
A habit that keeps the list true
Once a week, count only the fast movers and correct the quantity. Do not try to count the whole shop every evening. When a delivery arrives, add the quantity before you put the cartons away. When you sell, subtract. The list fails in one place: a sale or a purchase that nobody writes down. A low-stock line only helps if the quantity above it is roughly right.
If an item has a barcode, scanning it is faster than searching by name, and it stops two similar packs from being mixed up. If it does not, the name is enough.
Where this sits in ERPesque
In ERPesque the same list is the Inventory screen. Each item has a unit, and a conversion when you buy in one unit and sell in another. Categories and price lists are there if you need them. Low stock is a filter on that list, so the reorder line is something you can look at instead of remembering. The camera scans a barcode at the item and at the till. You can export a stock report to CSV or PDF when an accountant or a supplier wants the numbers on paper.
ERPesque is free to download on Google Play. It does not replace a count of the shelf. It keeps the list after you have counted.