Check the delivery before the van drives away

Count the cartons out loud as they come off the cart, open one of every item, read the bill against the pile instead of your memory, and write any damage on the bill before it is signed. Four checks, two minutes, and almost every stock shortage a small shop suffers is caught at the door.

The two minutes you never get back

The cart arrives at eleven, the street is busy, two customers are waiting, and the man unloading wants to be somewhere else. He stacks, hands you the bill, you sign, he leaves.

Everything after that moment is a disadvantage. Once the bill is signed and the cart is gone, a missing carton is your word against a piece of paper you put your own name on, and you will usually decide it is not worth the phone call.

So it goes on the shelf as if it were all there. The stock count is wrong from that morning onwards, and it stays wrong, and three weeks later you are staring at a shelf that does not match your book and wondering where things go.

The strange part is that shopkeepers who count every rupee at the counter often count nothing at the door, even though far more money moves through the door in a day than through any single sale.

It is not carelessness. It is that the door feels like somebody else's process, and the counter feels like yours. Getting that back is most of the work.

What actually goes wrong at the door

Before deciding anybody is at fault, it helps to know what the gaps really are, because they are mostly not what shopkeepers assume.

The commonest is inner counts. The outer carton is correct, the number of pieces inside it is not, because it was made up from a broken box at the warehouse. Nobody decided anything; it was a busy morning there too.

The second is variants. You ordered the small size and half the load is the large one, or the flavour you never sell arrived instead of the one you always do. This is invisible from outside a carton, and it is the single most expensive mistake to find late, because by then you cannot return it and it becomes stock that never sells.

The third is rates. The bill is complete, everything arrived, and one item is priced above your last bill. Sometimes that is a genuine market move you needed to know about, and sometimes it is a keying error, and both are settled in ten seconds while the man is standing there.

The fourth is damage. A leaking tin, a crushed corner, a torn sack. Almost every supplier will take these back without argument on the day, and almost none of them enjoy hearing about it two days later.

Only the fifth is deliberate, and it is the rarest by far. Building a routine that catches the first four is what makes the fifth irrelevant.

The four checks that fit inside the unloading

None of this requires you to stop serving customers or to stand over anybody. It requires the checks to happen while the goods are moving, not afterwards.

Four checks that fit inside the unloading

1. 1Count the outers as they come off, out loudCartons, sacks, crates. Count them yourself as they land, saying the number, so the man carrying them hears the same count you are keeping.
2. 2Open one of each new item and look insideInner counts, sizes and variants are where the honest mistakes live. One opened carton per item tells you more than the whole bill does.
3. 3Read the bill against the pile, not against your memoryLine by line, with the goods in front of you. Rates included, because a rate that moved since your last order is easiest to catch while the man is still there.
4. 4Write the damage on the bill and get it signedA broken tin noted and initialled on the spot is a settled matter. The same tin reported by phone at night is a conversation nobody enjoys.

Counting out loud is the whole first step and it does two jobs. It keeps your own count honest when you are being interrupted, and it means the man carrying the goods is hearing the same number you are writing. A disagreement then is a shrug and a recount.

Opening one of each item is the step people skip because it feels excessive. It is not. It is the only way to see inner counts, sizes and variants, and it takes one carton per item rather than all of them. If an item comes every week and has never been wrong, drop it from the routine and keep the ones that have been.

Reading the bill against the pile rather than against your memory is what catches the rate change. Your memory of the previous rate is not evidence and you will not trust it enough to raise the question, so keep the last bill for each supplier where you can reach it in five seconds.

And writing damage on the bill before signing is the step that turns a problem into a settled matter. A note and a signature at the door is final. A phone call at night is a negotiation.

What a small gap costs across a year

It is worth doing the arithmetic once, because the amounts feel too small to bother with until you multiply them.

Say two items go missing on each weekly delivery

Value of what quietly does not arrive, per deliveryRs 320

Deliveries in a year52

Paid for, never soldRs 16,640

Profit you would have made selling itRs 2,500 or so

The yearly cost of not counting at the doorAbout Rs 19,000

The last row is the one that changes behaviour. Nobody chases three hundred rupees. Everybody would chase nineteen thousand, and it is the same thing seen from a different distance.

There is a second cost that does not appear in the figure at all. Goods you paid for and never received make your stock record wrong, and a wrong stock record makes every decision after it slightly wrong too: what to reorder, what is selling, what is sitting. That is the quiet part of stock going missing with nobody knowing how.

And there is the reordering cost. If the book says you have twelve and you have nine, you will run out three days early on an item people came in for, and they will buy it somewhere else that week.

The words that keep the supplier friendly

This is the part shopkeepers worry about, and the worry is misplaced. Done plainly, counting improves the relationship rather than damaging it.

Checking without souring the relationship

✓Say this

• "Give me two minutes, I count everything that comes in."
• "Twelve cartons, we both counted. Sign here."
• "One tin is leaking. Write it on the bill and it is settled."
• "The rate here is higher than the last bill. Is that right?"

✕Not this

• "Your people always send short."
• Signing the bill first and counting afterwards
• Calling at ten at night about a missing packet
• Letting it go four times and exploding on the fifth

Notice that everything on the left is about the goods and nothing is about the person. "I count everything that comes in" is a description of your shop. "Your people always send short" is an accusation, and it will be repeated back at the warehouse in a way that does not help you.

Say it once, at the start, to every supplier you deal with, and then simply do it every time. What causes friction is not counting; it is counting suddenly, on the one delivery you feel suspicious about, because that is unmistakably a message.

The other half is speed. A supplier will absorb a note on the bill without blinking and will resist a claim made two days later, and he is not being unreasonable: by then the load has been unloaded, restacked and mixed with three other shops' returns.

Suppliers also notice which shops count. Over a year, the load that goes to the shop where everything gets checked is packed more carefully, which is worth more than any single shortage you catch, and it matters most if you are dealing with one supplier or several.

When you find it after he has gone

Sometimes you find the gap on Thursday, from a carton opened four days after it arrived. That is a different situation and it needs a different tone.

Call once, early in the day, and be honest about the delay. "I opened this today and it is six pieces short. I know I should have caught it on the day." An admission at the front of the sentence gets a far better answer than a demand does.

Ask for it on the next delivery rather than as money back. It is easier for him to add six pieces to a load than to return cash, and it keeps the whole thing as an adjustment between two businesses instead of a dispute.

Accept a no gracefully if it comes, once. Then change the routine so it cannot happen again with that item, and let the loss buy you the habit. What you must not do is stay quiet and stay angry, because that is how a good supplier relationship dies for reasons the supplier never learns about.

Keep a note of these, though. Two or three in a year is ordinary life. A steady pattern with one supplier is worth a calm conversation with him about how his loads are packed, and if nothing changes, it is worth knowing while you still have a choice. Keeping the count itself straight afterwards is the ordinary discipline covered in keeping shop stock right.

Common questions

I cannot leave the counter while the goods are unloaded. What is the minimum?

Count the outers, and only the outers, as they come in. Standing at your counter, watching and saying the number aloud as each carton lands, costs you nothing and catches the largest single category of error. Then open one of each new item when the queue clears, and if you find something short within the hour, most suppliers will still treat it as a same-day matter.

My supplier sends a boy who cannot make decisions. Is it worth telling him anything?

Tell him nothing that needs a decision, and everything that needs a witness. Ask him to watch you count, to hear the number, and to put his initial on the bill beside anything you have written. He does not need authority for that, and a signature from the person who was actually there is far stronger than a phone call to somebody who was not.

What if I sign the bill and find the problem an hour later?

Call immediately rather than at closing time, because same-day still means something and same-hour means more. Say plainly what you found, keep the packaging exactly as it is, and take a photograph of it before anything moves. Most suppliers accept a same-day report without much argument; what they resist is a claim that arrives after the goods could have been sold, opened or mixed with other stock.

Should I check goods that arrive on credit any differently?

Check them harder, because you are agreeing to a debt as well as to a delivery, and the bill you sign becomes the amount you owe regardless of what is in the cartons. A shortage on a cash purchase costs you the goods; a shortage on a credit purchase costs you the goods and leaves you paying for them later, which is the part that hurts when the bill falls due.

The load is fine but the rate is higher. Do I refuse it?

Rarely, and not at the door. Ask the question while he is there, note the answer on your copy, and take the goods if you need them, because refusing a whole load over one line usually costs more than the line. Then decide before the next order whether the rate stands, and quietly check what the same item costs elsewhere, because a rate that moves without notice is worth understanding rather than fighting about.

How long should I keep old bills?

Keep at least a year, sorted by supplier, and keep the most recent one for each supplier somewhere you can reach in seconds, because that is the one you actually use. Old bills settle rate arguments, show you how prices have moved on your own shelves, and give you a real record of what you buy, which is worth far more than the small trouble of a spike on a nail behind the counter.