A guest wants the oil used in her massage
After her treatment, a guest asks for the body oil the therapist used. The shelf is empty. The receptionist checks the stockroom, which has one in the wrong size. The next delivery is not due for two weeks because the order was placed from last Monday's count. Meanwhile the treatment rooms are nearly out of the professional version of the same oil, which nobody counted because it is used from large bottles and decanted.
The spa manager places an urgent order with the product house, pays extra delivery and adds another reminder to count more often.
Two kinds of stock, one weekly count
| Stock type | How it is used | How it is tracked |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | Sold to guests | Till sales, sometimes |
| Back-bar professional | Used in treatments | Weekly count, if at all |
| Consumables | Towels, couch roll, slippers | When someone notices |
| Gift sets | Seasonal retail | Ordered once, not tracked |
Tills often record retail sales but are not linked to reordering. Back-bar use follows the treatments booked, which the diary knows, but nothing connects the diary to stock. So everything depends on the weekly count, which slips whenever the spa is busy, which is exactly when stock runs fastest.
Missed sales and emergency orders
A guest who wants to take home the product she just experienced is the easiest sale you will make, and an empty shelf loses it. Urgent orders cost more to deliver. Over-ordering the wrong items ties up cash in stock that goes out of date or out of season. Therapists substitute products in treatments when their usual ones run out, which changes the experience the guest paid for.
How we build spa stock control
- Your product list is set up with retail and back-bar lines, units and pack sizes, and minimum levels your manager chooses.
- Retail stock goes down with every sale, read from your till or spa system through its API or a daily export.
- Back-bar use is estimated from treatments completed, using a typical quantity per treatment your therapists agree. It is an estimate, and a monthly count corrects it.
- When a line drops below its minimum, a draft order to the right product house or supplier is created, grouped by supplier.
- The manager reviews and sends orders, rather than building them from a count.
- A short monthly count on a phone updates actual levels and shows any gap between expected and counted stock.
We do not decide what to stock or how much. The minimum levels and product choices are yours; the system makes them visible and drafts the orders.
A stockroom that tells you what it needs
The manager opens a list of draft orders on Monday, checks them and sends them. Retail best sellers are reordered before the shelf is empty. Back-bar products are topped up in step with how busy the treatment diary is, so a busy month is planned for. The monthly count becomes a check rather than the whole system, and gaps between expected and actual use become visible instead of mysterious.
Seasonal gift sets are easier too. Because you can see how fast last year's Christmas sets sold week by week, the order for this year is based on something firmer than memory, and the leftover stock in January is smaller. Therapists stop discovering an empty back-bar bottle halfway through a treatment, because the reorder was drafted when the level first dropped.
Does this sound like your stockroom?
- Best-selling retail products regularly run out.
- Back-bar products are not tracked between counts.
- Orders are placed from a count that is often late.
- You pay for urgent deliveries from product houses.
- Nobody can say how much product a treatment typically uses.