You may think that employee and customer theft would cause most of your business’s shortage, but operational and paperwork errors can cause just as much, if not more loss. Many people may feel intimidated with the thought of performing the sometimes tedious job of sifting through invoices to discover paperwork errors, but it must be done. These seemingly small errors can build up to a much greater loss in time if they are not monitored and corrected. You may be great at preventing loss by using the best bottle security available, such bottle locks to stop products from leaving the store without payment, but if you fail to verify what’s coming into your store, you could be losing just as much money.
It doesn’t matter if all your bottles have bottle locks on them, or are protected by the entire Alpha Security catalog of products, someone should be checking the purchase order and comparing it with the invoice when the product is received. If you receive a shipment of wine that is supposed to be received as single pieces, and it is mistakenly keyed in as cases, you will be overpaying for the shipment and it will also cause your inventory will be inaccurate. So what causes these discrepancies? There are many different reasons you may have a discrepancy on the paperwork for your shipment. The company in which you receive your supply may have changed the cost of an item, and your system may not reflect the new cost as of yet, so if you aren’t looking at these details, you could be losing a lot of money. Conversely, your company may have changed the cost, and your supplier’s system may not be up to date.
Another reason for the errors could be that they are caused intentionally in order to make more money on the shipment. This is not usually the case, but it is a possibility. How closely are you looking at the items you are receiving? Are you just taking the delivery person’s word for the quantity of the items? Catching these errors should be just as important to you as bottle security for your inventory. Here is an example: You receive ten bottles of wine that have a price tag of $29.99, and the delivery person hands you a bottle to scan. You then scan the bottle, which is the correct item, and they tell you that there is a quantity of ten bottles under that particular item number. You take their word because you are busy and it would take more time to verify all of the bottles. The only problem is the driver handed you the correct bottle to scan, but that was the only bottle that was listed at the $29.99 price point. The other nine bottles you took his word for are at a $19.99 price point. You just lost $90 by skipping verification of the order.
Not all paperwork discrepancies are intentional though, most are items that are keyed incorrectly on the invoice or purchase order. A colleague of mine recently caught a mistake when he was validating the items of a shipment. He was reviewing the paperwork when he noticed that the items cost was much higher than what it was sold for in the store. Someone mistakenly keyed the wrong price into the system, and the stores where getting charged much more than they should have been. Their store was able to get the money back, and he also communicated the issue to other stores that were incorrectly charged.
For more information contact us: (bottle security) or call 1.770.426.0547
You may think that employee and customer theft would cause most of your business’s shortage, but operational and paperwork errors can cause just as much, if not more loss. Many people may feel intimidated with the thought of performing the sometimes tedious job of sifting through invoices to discover paperwork errors, but it must be done. These seemingly small errors can build up to a much greater loss in time if they are not monitored and corrected. You may be great at preventing loss by using the best bottle security available, such Bottle Locks to stop products from leaving the store without payment, but if you fail to verify what’s coming into your store, you could be losing just as much money.
It doesn’t matter if all your bottles have Bottle Locks on them, or are protected by the entire Alpha Security catalog of products, someone should be checking the purchase order and comparing it with the invoice when the product is received. If you receive a shipment of wine that is supposed to be received as single pieces, and it is mistakenly keyed in as cases, you will be overpaying for the shipment and it will also cause your inventory will be inaccurate. So what causes these discrepancies? There are many different reasons you may have a discrepancy on the paperwork for your shipment. The company in which you receive your supply may have changed the cost of an item, and your system may not reflect the new cost as of yet, so if you aren’t looking at these details, you could be losing a lot of money. Conversely, your company may have changed the cost, and your supplier’s system may not be up to date.
Another reason for the errors could be that they are caused intentionally in order to make more money on the shipment. This is not usually the case, but it is a possibility. How closely are you looking at the items you are receiving? Are you just taking the delivery person’s word for the quantity of the items? Catching these errors should be just as important to you as bottle security for your inventory. Here is an example: You receive ten bottles of wine that have a price tag of $29.99, and the delivery person hands you a bottle to scan. You then scan the bottle, which is the correct item, and they tell you that there is a quantity of ten bottles under that particular item number. You take their word because you are busy and it would take more time to verify all of the bottles. The only problem is the driver handed you the correct bottle to scan, but that was the only bottle that was listed at the $29.99 price point. The other nine bottles you took his word for are at a $19.99 price point. You just lost $90 by skipping verification of the order.
Not all paperwork discrepancies are intentional though, most are items that are keyed incorrectly on the invoice or purchase order. A colleague of mine recently caught a mistake when he was validating the items of a shipment. He was reviewing the paperwork when he noticed that the items cost was much higher than what it was sold for in the store. Someone mistakenly keyed the wrong price into the system, and the stores where getting charged much more than they should have been. Their store was able to get the money back, and he also communicated the issue to other stores that were incorrectly charged.
For more information contact us: Bottle Security or call 1.770.426.0547
