Friday afternoon, counting jute sacks
The spreadsheet says you have four bags of the Colombian washed left. On the warehouse floor there are two full sacks, one half used bag with a scoop in it, and a GrainPro liner with maybe eight kilos at the bottom that someone decanted into a bucket last Tuesday. The Brazil you use for the house espresso blend is showing twenty kilos more than you can find.
So you do what you do every few weeks: weigh everything, correct the sheet, and wonder where the difference went. Meanwhile the head roaster has already planned next week's roasts from the old numbers, and there is a real chance the Monday blend comes up short.
Where the kilos go missing
The count is wrong because the stock is recorded in three different units by three different people. Deliveries come in as bags, usually 60 or 69 kilos depending on origin. Roasts go out as charge weights logged on the roaster or in a roast logging tool. Samples for cupping, sample roasts for a new wholesale prospect and the odd kilo for the team's own brew bar are not logged anywhere.
- Bags are booked in by count, but bag weights vary by origin and by importer.
- Charge weights are recorded against a profile name, not always against a lot.
- Two lots of the same origin share a pallet and get used interchangeably.
- Sample roasts and cupping pulls come out of stock without a record.
- Part bags are decanted into bins and lose their lot label.
None of these is a big mistake on its own. Added up over a month, they are why the sheet and the floor disagree.
What a wrong count really costs
The obvious cost is running out. A blend component that is not there on roast day means either changing the blend recipe on the fly, which your wholesale cafés notice in the cup, or pushing the roast and letting orders slip. The less obvious cost is buying. If you cannot trust the numbers, you over order green to be safe, and green coffee sitting in the warehouse for months ties up cash and ages. And when a lot is finished you often cannot say with confidence how much of it went into which blends, which makes costing each bag a guess.
The green stock ledger we build
- Every delivery is booked in from the importer's delivery note or contract, by lot number, bag count and actual weight, with a photo of the bag marks attached.
- Each lot gets a short code and a printable label, so part bags and bins keep their identity when they are decanted.
- When a roast is logged, the roaster picks the lot being charged. If you already log roasts in a tool such as Cropster, we read the batch record from it rather than asking for it twice.
- Sample pulls, cupping and sample roasts have their own quick entry on a phone, because they are the leaks that matter most.
- Stock is held as kilos per lot, with a running total per origin and per blend component.
- A weekly stock take screen lists each lot with its expected weight, and the difference you record is kept as a loss line rather than silently overwritten.
| Movement | How it is recorded now | With the ledger |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery | Bag count on the sheet | Lot, bags and weight from the delivery note |
| Roast charge | Profile name on the roaster | Charge weight against a specific lot |
| Samples and cupping | Not recorded | Quick phone entry against the lot |
| Part bags | Unlabelled bins | Lot label travels with the coffee |
| Stock take | Sheet overwritten | Differences kept and visible |
Reorder points are set per component in kilos of green, using what your roast plan is likely to consume, so the warning arrives while there is still time for the importer to deliver.
What changes on the warehouse floor
The roaster planning next week's production looks at kilos per lot, not a bag count that might be three weeks stale. When a lot runs low, the person who buys green sees it in time to call the importer. Stock takes become a check rather than a rescue, and the loss line tells you whether the gap is sample pulls, spillage or something else. Because each charge is tied to a lot, you can also see which lots went into which blends, which feeds straight into costing.
Signs this is your roastery
- The green stock sheet is corrected by hand after every count.
- You have run short of a blend component that the sheet said was there.
- Part bags sit in bins without a lot or arrival date on them.
- Sample roasts for prospects are not recorded anywhere.
- You order green early because you do not trust the numbers.