Loose stock: how to count what you sell by weight

Flour, sugar, rice, oil and loose tea cannot be counted, so a shortfall in them can hide for months. The fix is to give every sack a yield before you open it, weigh it when it arrives and when it empties, and decide in advance how much loss is normal. Then the gap is a number, not a feeling.

A sack is never short, only "about right"

A packet of biscuits is either on the shelf or it is not. Count forty, find thirty-four, and you know six are gone. That is why the article on stock that goes missing can tell you to count one shelf a week and be done.

A sack of sugar does not behave like that. You open it, sell from it for ten days, and at no point can anybody look at it and call it short. Half a sack looks like half a sack whether it holds 24 kg or 22. It is always about right, up to the morning it is empty, and even then all you know is that it is finished.

That is the whole problem with loose stock: a shortfall never announces itself. It cannot be caught by looking, only by arithmetic, and only if the arithmetic was set up before the stitch was cut.

Where the kilos actually go, before you blame anybody

Where the kilos actually go

• The scoop and the funnel: a few grams spilled at every serving, two hundred servings a day
• Moisture leaving: flour and pulses weigh less in the sixth week than in the first
• The generous hand that gives 1.05 kg for 1 kg, every sale, all day
• The customer's own tin weighed as though it were empty
• The grey sweepings at the bottom of the sack, off to the bin or the chickens
• The supplier's 50 kg that arrived as 49.4 kg and was never weighed at the door
• Sold in a rush, by money only, and never written by weight
• Actually taken by somebody, which is the last thing to check

The scoop spills. So does the funnel. A few grams a serving, two hundred servings a day, and a real weight is on the floor by closing time.

Some stock loses weight sitting still. Flour, pulses and grain give up moisture to the air. A sack of flour that weighed 50 kg in its first week weighs less in its sixth, and nobody stole the difference. It is one more way old stock costs you twice: in the rate, and on the scale.

Then the generous hand. The needle passes the kilo mark and you let it, because it is a good customer, or a child, or you are busy. Fifty grams on a kilo is five percent, and five percent of a 50 kg sack is 2.5 kg that never gets paid for.

The tare is the quiet one. A customer brings her own tin for oil, and it goes on the scale full and comes off weighed as though the tin were air. If it weighs 380 g and you charged what the needle said, you charged her for the tin.

Only after all that comes a person. A shop that has never measured the first six leaks cannot tell a helper from a wet month.

Give every sack a yield before you open it

A 50 kg sack of sugar is not "a sack". It is 50 kg that must come back as roughly 49 kg of sales plus a loss you decided in advance. That number, the yield, is the fix.

Write it per item. Sugar, 49 kg from 50. Flour, 48.5 from 50, because flour dries and dusts more. Loose tea, 24.5 from 25. Write a number, sell three sacks, correct it.

Sugar that gives 49.2 kg is normal. Sugar that gives 47.5 kg is 1.5 kg you have to explain, and because you know the day the sack opened and the day it emptied, you know exactly which ten days to look at.

Rashid opens a sack of sugar most mornings at seven, before his first customer. The sack goes on the platform scale before the stitch is cut, and he writes the reading on it with a marker. Tuesday it read 49.6 kg. The supplier had charged for 50. That is 400 g, Rs 56 at his buying rate: nothing on one sack, Rs 616 a month on eleven. He did not argue that day. By the third short sack he had something to argue with.

Weigh it twice: when it opens and when it empties

Two weighings, and a weekly test of the scale

1. 1Weigh the sack the day it arrives, before you cut the stitchWhole sack minus the empty-sack weight you weighed once. Write the reading on the sack with a marker.
2. 2Compare it with what the supplier charged49.4 kg charged as 50 is Rs 84 at Rs 140. Note it on the first sack, ask on the second, insist on the third.
3. 3Sell from it, and write every loose sale by weight"2 kg sugar, Rs 300", never only "Rs 300 of sugar". Money cannot be added back into kilos.
4. 4When it empties, weigh the sweepings and add up the kilos soldWhat the sack actually gave, set against the yield you wrote before it opened.
5. 5Once a week, put a known weight on the scaleA sealed 1 kg packet from your own shelf. If it reads 0.97, every kilo that week carried a gift. If it reads 1.03, you were shorting customers.

The first weighing asks: is this the weight I paid for? Weigh the whole sack before opening, subtract the weight of an empty sack, which you weigh once and write on the wall, and compare with the invoice. A shortfall belongs to the supplier only while the sack is still stitched. Once you have sold from it, it is yours.

The second weighing asks: what did this sack actually give? Add up the kilos sold from it, weigh the sweepings, and set the total against the yield you wrote.

That only works if loose sales are written by weight, not only money. "Rs 300 of sugar" tells you nothing when the sack empties. "2 kg sugar, Rs 300" adds up.

Then the scale, because every number above passes through it. Test it weekly against a known weight; a sealed 1 kg packet from your own shelf will do. If it reads 0.97 kg, you have been giving 30 g away on every kilo. If it reads 1.03 kg, you have been shorting customers without knowing. Stand it on something level and hard, never on the sack or a wobbling stool. And decide who reads it: four people serving are four generous hands, and a scale that faces the customer keeps all of them honest.

Decide the acceptable loss in advance, in percent and in rupees

Say a 50 kg sack of sugar, bought at Rs 140 a kilo and sold at Rs 150

The sack as bought: 50 kg at Rs 140Rs 7,000

Loss allowed in advance: 1%, half a kiloRs 75

Sales the sack should give: 49.5 kg at Rs 150Rs 7,425

Sales it actually gave: 47.5 kg at Rs 150Rs 7,125

The gap beyond the allowed loss: 2 kgRs 300

What the sack was meant to earn, before shop costsRs 425

The same gap on eight sacks a month, for a yearRs 28,800

An example, not a claim about your shop. Two kilos on one sack is a shrug. The same two kilos on every sack eats most of what sugar earns you.

You need two numbers per item before the sack opens: the loss you accept as a percentage, and what that percentage is worth in rupees.

The percent tells you whether a shortfall is normal. Say you allow 1% on sugar, 3% on flour, 2% on oil. A sugar sack that gives 49.4 kg is inside the line. One that gives 47.5 kg is not, because you drew the line before you had a reason to move it.

The rupees tell you whether to care. One percent of a Rs 7,000 sack is Rs 70. Five percent is Rs 350, and on a sack that was only ever going to earn Rs 425, that is most of the reason you stock sugar at all. When you set your rate, the allowed loss belongs inside it: the customer's Rs 150 a kilo has to pay for the 49 kg you sell and the 1 kg you decided to lose.

Do not set it to zero. A shopkeeper who allows nothing chases every 200 g and stops looking after a week. One who allows a written 1% ignores the 200 g and catches the 2 kg.

At half past eight on a Thursday night, Naseem is emptying the flour bin at the back of her shop so the new sack can go in. She sweeps the last of it, a little under 400 g of grey flour, into the chicken tin and opens her sales book. The sack gave 46.8 kg of written sales. She had allowed 48.5. That is 1.7 kg, about Rs 200 at her rate, gone in eleven days, and the two sacks before it were fine. She accuses nobody. She has a date, a number and an eleven-day window.

When the number is wrong, check the buying side first

When a sack comes up short, the reflex is to look at the counter. Look at the door first.

A sack that arrived at 49.4 kg and was never weighed will finish 600 g short however honestly it was sold, and the blame will land on whoever was serving. Before one question about selling, check the arrival: was it weighed, was the empty-sack weight subtracted, did the invoice quantity match the order?

Then check the sack's age. Flour bought in bulk and stored six weeks will dry. That drying is part of the price of the bulk rate, and it belongs inside the allowed loss, not in a mystery.

Only when the buying side is clean do you turn to the counter, and even then in order: the scale test, the tare habit, the generous hand, the unwritten sales. Dishonesty is the last door.

Turn the sack into a number in your book

All of this rests on one habit: the sack is written as its real quantity, never as "one sack". 50 kg in, at the rate you paid. Every kilo out as it sells. When the sack empties, the difference between what the book still shows and what the floor shows is the shortfall, already priced.

A khata (the ledger every shop keeps) that carries stock by weight makes this a two-minute check instead of an evening's argument. In Wasoolo a product carries a unit and a buy rate, so a sack of sugar goes in as 50 kg at Rs 140, comes down kilo by kilo as it sells, and reads at the end as rupees rather than a feeling. Wasoolo also keeps the supplier against each product, so the sack that arrived light has a name beside it when you pick up the phone.

The tool matters less than the two weighings. A shop that keeps its stock straight does not have a better helper. It has a yield on every sack before the stitch is cut.

Common questions

What yield should I start with?

Pick one and write it. A 2% loss on sugar and rice and 3% on flour is a fair place to begin; your first three sacks will correct it. Writing it matters more than the number.

I do not have a scale big enough for a whole sack.

Weigh it in parts, in two tubs on your counter scale, or buy a hanging spring scale, which costs less than one short sack a month. What matters is that the arrival weight is written before the stitch is cut.

My helper says weighing sacks means I suspect him.

Tell him the yield protects him. Without it, every short sack is a suspicion with nowhere to land but the counter. With it, the sack that arrived light goes on the supplier, the flour that dried goes on the weather, and he answers only for what is left.

Should I weigh the customer's container every time?

Yes, and where she can see it. Empty container on, press tare or note the weight, then fill. Four seconds, and it ends both tare losses at once: charging her for her pot, and giving her the pot's weight in oil.

How do I write loose sales during a rush?

Weight and money on one line: "2 kg sugar 300". If you cannot write during a rush, mark the opening date on the sack and add up the kilos from the day's sales that night. Never skip the weight, because a book full of rupees cannot be added back into kilos.

How much loss should worry me?

Whatever is beyond the line you drew before the sack opened. One sack over the line is a note. Two in a row on the same item is a check of the scale and the door. Three is a conversation, and by then you have dates and kilos to bring to it.