Performing stock counts allows you to monitor how your inventory is used and identify stock that may be lost, stolen, wasted, or used. This collates data from your stock purchases, sales, and recorded wastage, allowing you to perform regular stock takes and quickly identify discrepancies.

What’s in this guide?

Setting up stock counts
Performing a stock count
Reviewing past stock counts
Accessing the stock on hand report

Setting up stock counts

Before performing a stock count, you must enable the stock counts feature and ensure your product inventory settings are configured correctly. This section guides you through enabling the feature and configuring the required product settings.

Enabling stock counts

Enabling the stock counts feature allows you to create, manage, and track stock counts for your inventory. This can be done by any user with admin or Back of House permissions in Back Office.

To enable stock counts:

1. Log in to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials. 
2. From the navigation menu, select Features.
3. Search for and select Stock Counts.
   
4. Click Enable. 
   

Configuring product inventory settings

To ensure accurate stock counts, your products must have the correct inventory settings. This ensures that only the products you purchase and track as inventory are marked as stock items. Updating the inventory setting can also be done in bulk with a .CSV import.

To configure the product inventory settings:

1. From the navigation menu, select Products.
2. Select the cog wheel (Settings) on the product you want to configure.
3. Select Accounting. Here, you can update the following:
   • I Buy This Item: The item is purchased from a supplier and appears as a purchasable item when placing an order to your suppliers. 
   • I Sell This Item: The item is available to sell on your POS.
   • I Stock This Item: The item appears when performing a stock count or viewing your stock on hand report.

Creating and assigning stock locations

Stock locations allow you to keep track of where your inventory items are stored. For example, if you keep items in your bar, cool room, and cellar, staff know exactly where to look to ensure no items are missed during stock counts. Only users with admin or Back of House permissions can create and assign stock locations. 

To create and assign an item to a stock location:

1. From the navigation menu, select Inventory > Stock locations.
2. Select New stock location
   
3. In the Stock location name field, enter a name for the location. 
4. Click Save.
   
5. Select View products.
6. Check the box next to the item to assign it to the location. Alternatively, you can assign items in bulk either by page or all items by clicking the down arrow next to PRODUCT NAME, then choose Page or All. 
7. Select Assign locations. The same process applies for unassigning products from a stock location. 
   
8. Tick the checkbox for your preferred stock location. 
9.  Click Assign locations
   

Performing a stock count

Performing a stock count is essential to keep your inventory accurate and up to date. When a stock count is saved as a draft, it is only visible on the device used to create it. Once the stock count is submitted, it's visible to all users who have access to view inventory. 

Once a stock count is submitted, it cannot be deleted. Any necessary adjustments must be made by performing a new stock count.

Counting individual stock items

You can manually count items directly in Back Office by entering the quantity for each required item. Stock count can be performed by location, product tags or all products.  

To count individual stock items:

1. From the navigation menu, select Inventory > Stock counts. 
2. Click New stock count. 
3. Select the method for counting your stock:
   • Count by location: Count items stored in your selected stock location.
   • Count by product tag: Count items associated with your selected product tag.
   • Count all products: Count all stock items across your entire inventory. 
4. Click Next. 
   
5. (Optional) If you selected Count by location, choose the locations you want to count. 
6. (Optional) If you selected Count by product tag, choose the product tags associated with the items you want to count. 
7. Select Start stock count. 
   
8. Enter the counted quantity individually or by the purchased format.
9. Click Save, next item to move to the next item. If you don't want to count an item, select Don't count this item so a quantity of 0 is not recorded.
   
10. (Optional) If you need to stop counting stock, click Back in the upper-left corner, then click Save. Selecting Don't save will delete the stock count, even if it was previously saved.
11. Once counting is complete, click Review stock count.
    
12. Review the Total variance, Total cost variance, and Total stock value to ensure the results of the stock count are accurate before submitting.
13. (Optional) If you notice a variance and would like to recount an item, click Recount to update the quantity, then click Apply changes. 
    
14. Click Submit stock count. 
    

Importing a stock count using a CSV file

You can update your inventory by importing a stock count using a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file in Back Office. Unlike counting individual products, this method does not allow reviewing before submission. 

Once uploaded, the stock count cannot be deleted, and any corrections must be made through uploading a new stock count. 

To import a stock count using a CSV file:

1. Follow steps 1-7 in the Counting individual stock items section. 
2. Click the ellipsis (⋯) in the upper-right corner. 
3. Select Export to CSV file to download a template for editing. 
   
4. Open the CSV file using Google Sheets.
5. Enter your counted quantity for each product. 
6. Once you're finished, select File > Download > Comma Separated Values (.csv).
   
7. To upload the file, navigate back to the Back Office Inventory section, then click the ellipsis (⋯). 
8. Select Import CSV file.
   
9. Select the file to upload the from your device. 
10. Click Submit CSV to upload your stock count. 

Reviewing past stock counts

You can review past stock counts to track inventory changes and verify past adjustments. This allows you to check previous records when auditing or reconciling inventory.

To review past stock counts:

1. From the navigation menu, select Inventory > Stock counts. 
2. (Optional) You can use the calendar dropdown to filter results by dys, weeks, or month. By default, the time range is set to the past 30 days.
   
3. Select the stock count from the list to view detailed information, including the counted quantities, cost price, and variance for each product.
   

Accessing the stock on hand report

The stock on hand report provides a real time view of your inventory levels. The current quantities are determined from your received purchase orders, minus any wastage and items sold, and including those used in recipes.

To access the stock on hand report:

1. From the navigation menu, select Inventory > Stock on hand.
   
2. (Optional) Click the Stock Filter dropdown to search for specific items by product name or tag, or to choose which site’s stock list to view. 
   

What's next?