keeping records - stock control and accounting

I guess this depends on the number of stock items/lines you have. Could you get away with using excel spreadsheets for stock control? Many of the accounts packages i see tend to get expensive if you want a good element of stock control.
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Barr Stevenson
Chartered Accountant
http:/www.jsaccountants.co.uk

If you are selling on line you should be able to integrate the stock control into your sales system without too much bother. Our more technically minded friends on here will be able to suggest what packages to use, but I believe even the more basic packages (ie inexpensive) have the ability to carry a live stock figure which is reduced every time you sell something, and have the facility to add to stock levels every time you buy something. Ie basic stock control. Having an integrated system is helpful as you will of course be far less likely to sell product that you don’t physically have and therefore avoid angry customers. For a store your stock system will be a core system so it is well worth spend some time and some of your no doubt limited funds getting it right. Given your requirements with lead times you may need something a bit more sophisticated to work out how much you sell a day/week etc to compute your re-order level, but even this can be done with a simple report out of the system and a run through by eye of what you are getting low of until you are too big and need to develop some more formal tools. I think even the standard worldpay basket comes with functionality along these lines, you can then update the daily or weekly totals into your accounting system rather than every transaction. As Barr says - what is right for you will depend on your size and number of lines, and a simple execl solution may suffice to begin with but can get messy quickly if you start doing well and get a lot of volume. If you need a bit of help getting your head around the stock and integration with your accounts then please let me know, I used to do a lot of systems work and it shouldn’t be too hard to put something workable in place for you. Regards,
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James Smith
Chartered Accountant
www.jamesesmith.co.uk
01235 536 773

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Your indispensable guide to Small Business Bookkeeping, Self-Assessment & VAT

It depends on what online shopping system you are using - Actinic, OSCommerce, EROL, ShopFactory? Or is it bespoke? If so, do you know anything about it? Regards, Richard
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Regards,
Richard
Retail World - Supporting Retailers Across the UK
www.retailforum.co.uk

A guy I know who has a fairly large online business uses a Sage program which automatically deducts stock levels appropriately when a sale goes through on ebay or his own site. Its a very efficient system but , as the other guys mentioned above it depends on the volume your shifting. He must be sending out over 100 items a day so its probably a useful thing to have. If your sending out even 30-40 things per day you probably could get away using excel. It would just be a matter of making a few simple subtractions everyday then changing the stock number. Come to think of it you can use Microsoft Access if you have it available - it has stock control features Regards Rob