Inventory Management Checklist

Export the sell-through report from Lightspeed, Shopify POS, or NetSuite for the trailing 4 weeks. Flag SKUs with WOS under 2 (reorder candidates) and over 12 (markdown candidates). The inventory planner owns this pull.

Departments turning under 3x annually are usually overbought; over 8x are likely understocked and losing sales to stockouts. Compare against the buyer's plan and last year's same-week numbers.

Layer in known promo events, holiday windows, and prior-year sell curves. Buyers commonly forget transitional weeks — back-to-school tail, post-holiday clearance ramp — which is where forecast misses hurt margin most.

Never sign the BOL/POD as "OK" without a physical carton count. Vendor short-ships caught after the driver leaves rarely get reimbursed. Note any visible damage or seal breaks on the driver's copy.

Scan each UPC against the open PO in your inventory system. Note overages, shortages, and substitutions. The receiving associate owns the count; the manager owns sign-off.

Most vendor agreements require claims within 5-10 business days of receipt. Attach photos of damaged cartons, the signed BOL with exceptions noted, and the discrepancy report from the scan.

Post the receipt in Lightspeed, Shopify, or NetSuite so available-to-sell updates. Delays here cause oversells on the e-comm channel — a common BOPIS gotcha when receiving lags behind floor placement.

Source-tag at receiving rather than at floor placement — Sensormatic or Checkpoint hard tags on high-shrink categories (denim, fragrance, small electronics). Tagging at the floor is where shrink leaks in.

Follow the bin map so pickers and BOPIS associates can find product on first pass. Floating stock — boxes parked in aisles "temporarily" — is the leading cause of phantom stockouts at the register.

For grocery, beauty, and consumables, pull older receipts forward and put new stock at the back. Check expiration windows on every restock pass and pull anything within the markdown window per category SOP.

Rotate the count list so A-items (top 20% by velocity) are counted monthly, B-items quarterly, C-items annually. Use a handheld scanner; blind counts (counter doesn't see system on-hand) catch more variance than confirmation counts.

Variances over $100 or 3% of category on-hand get investigated before adjustment. Common causes: receiving miscount, mis-scan at register (similar SKUs), mis-binned in stockroom, internal theft, sweethearting at the register. Adjusting without investigating hides the shrink trend.

Manager approval required on adjustments over the threshold defined in the cash-and-inventory SOP. Adjustments hit COGS or shrink expense per the chart of accounts — confirm the coding before posting in QuickBooks or NetSuite.

Pull CCTV (Verkada, Solink, Genetec) for the affected SKU's location over the last 14 days. Cross-reference high-refund cashiers, void rates, and no-sales from the POS exception report. LP manager owns the investigation file.

Flag cashiers with refund rates above store average, repeated no-receipt returns, or post-void patterns. Sweethearting and refund fraud are the two largest internal-shrink vectors and only show up in exception reporting.

Walk a tagged item through the gates to confirm trigger; pass a deactivated item to confirm clean exit. Dead gates and dead deactivators both bleed shrink — and the latter creates angry customers at the next retailer's gates.

SKUs over 12 weeks of supply or past the second markdown trigger date go on the markdown list. Verify margin against the category cost-protection floor before approving — markdowns below cost require district manager sign-off.

Final review by the store manager covers turnover by department, week-over-week shrink, open vendor claims, and markdown impact on margin. Submit to the district manager for the Monday district call.