Two sites, one van, no idea what is where
Your social enterprise has grown. There is the original café and shop at the community centre, a second café in the library, a market stall on Saturdays and a stand at the hospital on weekdays. You sell your own products, such as baked goods, candles, soaps, crafts, refurbished items, alongside bought-in stock like drinks and snacks.
Stock moves between sites in the van, in someone's car, or in a trainee's arms across the car park. Each site does a paper count on Friday afternoon, when someone remembers. Ordering is done by the manager looking at the shelves. The library café ran out of oat milk on Tuesday while the community centre had a whole case at the back. The workshop made a batch of candles that turned out to be sitting unsold at two sites already.
Why multi-site stock is hard for a social enterprise
Retailers with several branches use stock systems for this. Social enterprises often grew site by site, with tills added one at a time and no shared stock record behind them.
- Each site has its own till, sometimes from different providers, with its own product list.
- Your own products are made in batches and moved to sites informally.
- Transfers between sites are not recorded, so neither site's figure is right.
- Counts are done on paper, by different people, at different times.
- Trainees help with stock, and the process needs to be one they can follow.
What stock guesswork costs
Sales are lost when a site runs out of something another site has plenty of. Waste goes up when perishable stock sits at the wrong site until it passes its date.
Production gets misjudged. If you cannot see what is unsold across all sites, the workshop or kitchen keeps making what is not selling and not enough of what is.
And the trading figures your board relies on are only as good as the stock numbers underneath them.
Shared stock across sites
What we build links your tills and your production to one stock record.
- Products are held in one list, shared across all sites and tills, with the same codes. Where tills come from different providers, such as Square, SumUp, Zettle or others, we sync the product list to each through their APIs.
- Sales at each till reduce stock at that site automatically.
- Batches from your own workshop or kitchen are added to stock at the site they go to, entered on a phone when they are made or delivered.
- Transfers between sites are logged on a phone in a few taps, reducing one site and increasing the other.
- Counts are done on a phone by scanning or picking products, with a simple guided screen trainees can use, and differences are shown for a manager to check.
- Reorder levels per site trigger a list for the manager, and a combined view shows what is unsold across all sites before the next production run.
- Stock values flow to your accounts, such as Xero or QuickBooks, at month end.
| Task | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Knowing stock at each site | Walk round and look | Live figure per site |
| Moving stock between sites | Not recorded | Transfer logged on a phone |
| Weekly count | Paper sheet, retyped | Guided phone count |
| Reordering | By eye | Reorder list per site |
| Planning production | Guesswork | Unsold stock across all sites |
If your sites already share a till system with stock management built in, we help you set that up properly before building anything.
A normal Tuesday
The library café manager sees oat milk is low on her reorder list on Monday. The system shows the community centre has a spare case, and a trainee brings it over on Tuesday morning, logging the transfer on the tablet. Nobody runs out.
Before the workshop plans next week's candles, the manager checks unsold candles across all sites. There are plenty of lavender and none of the Christmas range, so that is what gets made.
Does this sound like your trading arm?
- Each site counts stock on paper.
- Stock moves between sites without being recorded.
- Sites run out of things another site has plenty of.
- Production is planned without knowing what is unsold.
- Stock figures for the accounts are estimates.