There are several ways to account for damaged, wasted, expired, spoiled, stolen, or otherwise "lost" inventory. This also applies to notating donations or samples.
Each industry will have a different preferred term, but no matter what you call them, we have a few different ways of handling them.
Option 1 - Using Stocktakes (Best for Detailed Tracking)
Stocktakes are a great tool that can be used to reconcile and get your inventory up to date while tracking the reasons for losses.
Create Custom Reasons for Loss
We suggest creating a custom Reason for your Stocktake to categorize different types of loss.
How to create a custom Reason:
Click the '+' next to 'Reason' when setting up your Stocktake
Name it accordingly for your records
Examples of custom Reasons:
"Expired Goods"
"Spoilage"
"Theft"
"Damaged"
"Donations"
"Samples"
Note: Once custom Reasons are created, they cannot be edited or deleted, so double-check before saving!
Add Products and Track Losses
Add your products to the Stocktake
Manually enter the quantities you want to subtract or add to your counts by editing the discrepancy column directly
Remember: Use a negative sign before any quantity you want to subtract or deduct from your "Actual" count
Example: If you have 10 damaged units, enter -10 in the Discrepancy column.
This method is best tracked on the Stocktake Discrepancy Report. There, you can set the date range and organize by Reason and quickly see the total amount adjust for any particular movement, as well as the associated cost.
Otherwise, you can also use the Inventory Change Report. Just filter by Stocktake and look under the "Removed" column.
Option 2 - The Manual Adjustment
All methods below will track the losses directly on the Inventory Change Report. Just click on the Display button and enable the "Removed" column.
You can edit the quantities (via the old Catalog tab -> Actions -> Edit on the inventory page) and add a note explaining the loss.
Option 3 - The Discount
To track loss as part of your sales, we recommend running the products through the POS as a "sale" with a 100% discount.
This approach tracks the losses in your Discount Report and the inventory is accurately decremented.