Tuesday morning at the compost heap
Your plant area supervisor starts Tuesday by walking the benches. There are a dozen heucheras that went mushy over the weekend, a tray of bedding with botrytis, three hydrangeas knocked off a trolley and snapped, and a row of lavender that has simply sat there too long and gone woody. They all go on the barrow and out to the compost bay. Nobody writes anything down, because the only way to record a write-off is to go to the office PC, find the product in the EPOS and adjust the stock, one line at a time.
By the end of the season the EPOS still thinks you own several hundred plants that no longer exist. The stocktake finds the gap, somebody posts one big adjustment, and the finance report shows a loss figure with no story behind it. The buyer asks which lines are dying and which supplier's plants arrive tired, and nobody can answer.
Why losses stay invisible
The problem is not that staff do not care. It is that the recording step lives in the wrong place. Losses happen outside, on wet benches, in the middle of a watering round. The system that could record them lives indoors, behind a login, on a screen designed for purchase orders.
- Write-offs need the office PC, so they are saved up and then forgotten.
- Many plant lines share a generic barcode or have none, so the right product is hard to find.
- There is no agreed list of loss reasons, so even recorded losses say nothing useful.
- Plants that are marked down and then die are counted twice or not at all.
- Nobody sees the losses by supplier or delivery, so a poor batch looks like bad luck.
What the missing record is costing
Without a loss record, your plant margin is a guess until the stocktake, and the stocktake gives one number for the whole year. Buyers reorder lines that quietly fail on your site, because the sales look fine and the losses are invisible. Suppliers who send plants that are already stressed never get a credit claim, because nobody can show which delivery the dead stock came from.
There is also a cost in trust. When the EPOS stock figure is known to be wrong, staff stop believing it, and the website or click and collect service starts selling plants that went to the compost bay last week.
A loss log that lives on the bench
- We build a simple mobile web app that staff open on a phone or a rugged handheld, with large buttons that work with wet hands.
- Staff scan the plant label or search by name and pot size, then pick a reason from a short list your team agrees: disease, damage, past its best, pest, frost, customer return.
- Quantity and an optional photo are captured, along with the bench or zone and the member of staff.
- The app posts the write-off to your EPOS through its API or a scheduled import, so stock is corrected the same day.
- Where a plant came in on a recent delivery, the loss is linked to that delivery so a supplier claim can be raised with evidence.
- A weekly summary goes to the plant buyer showing losses by line, supplier, reason and zone.
| Question | Today | With the loss log |
|---|---|---|
| How many plants did we lose? | Found at stocktake | Visible each week |
| Which lines fail here? | Staff memory | Losses by line and season |
| Which supplier sends tired stock? | Anecdote | Losses linked to deliveries |
| Is EPOS stock right? | Rarely | Corrected as losses happen |
| Evidence for a credit claim | None | Photo, date and delivery |
If your EPOS cannot accept stock adjustments from outside, we produce a daily adjustment file your office imports in one step, rather than asking staff to retype.
How the plant area runs afterwards
The morning bench walk stays the same, with one difference: before a plant goes on the barrow, it gets scanned. That takes a few seconds and the phone is already in a pocket. The supervisor sees the day's losses on one screen before the coffee break and can spot a pattern, such as one bench that is always too wet.
The buyer plans next spring from real sell-through and real losses, not sales alone. When a supplier delivery arrives in poor condition, the credit conversation starts with photos and dates instead of a vague complaint.
Is your plant area losing stock silently?
- The compost bay fills up but the EPOS stock figure never drops.
- Your stocktake plant adjustment is one large number with no detail.
- Buyers cannot say which lines have the highest losses on your site.
- Supplier credit claims for poor deliveries rarely happen.
- Click and collect sometimes sells plants you no longer have.