Stock control for a shop

The real problem with stock control is not that a number is wrong, it is that nobody can say when it went wrong. So in Refresh a balance only ever moves by document: receiving, a sale, a transfer, a write-off or a stocktake. Every change has an author, a time and a reason, and any line can be traced through its movement history.

Balances are held per warehouse and per location rather than as one company-wide total. That is what lets you separate the shop floor from the stockroom, and one shop from another.

Receiving checks what actually arrived against the delivery note, so a discrepancy shows immediately rather than a month later. Cost is captured on receiving, including in the purchase currency — margin is calculated from it afterwards.

A transfer between shops is a document with send and receive history, so goods do not go missing in transit and the balance stays trustworthy at both ends.

A write-off is its own operation with a reason: breakage, expiry, tester, shortage. Losses then appear in reports as their own line instead of dissolving into an unexplained shortfall nobody can account for.

A stocktake is done by scanning: you count the shelves, Refresh compares the count against the books and shows the discrepancy line by line — including sizes, colours and batches where a product is held as variants.

The result is closed with a stocktake document. That matters more than it sounds: a back-dated edit erases the trail, while a document keeps both the number and the explanation.