The order that is always a guess
Every day, someone places the order with your veterinary wholesaler. The practice management system suggests quantities based on stock levels, but everyone knows those levels are wrong. So the order is adjusted by walking to the shelves and looking.
Some products run out regularly. Others pile up. Expensive items sit at the back of the fridge unused. A vet reaches for a common injectable in the middle of a consult and the box is empty, and a nurse has to borrow from the branch down the road.
At the annual stock take, the adjustment figure is large, and nobody can explain where the difference went. The figures are corrected, and within a month they are wrong again.
Where the stock figures go wrong
Deliveries are put away without being booked in, or booked in with the wrong pack size. Items used in consults and theatre are not always charged, so the system still thinks they are there. Vets take stock for their cars or for a branch without recording it. Returns and breakages are not recorded.
Each is small, but together they make the system's figure unreliable within weeks of a stock take.
Veterinary stock has its own traps. Products come in packs but are dispensed as individual tablets or millilitres, so a unit mismatch between the wholesaler and the system can throw a figure out by a factor of ten. Injectables are drawn from multi-dose vials across many patients. Farm and equine vets carry large amounts of stock in their vehicles. Each of those needs handling properly, or the figure drifts.
What bad stock figures cost
| Symptom | Effect |
|---|---|
| Running out | Patients wait or items are borrowed from another practice |
| Over-ordering | Cash on the shelf and products going out of date |
| Manual ordering | Staff time spent walking shelves |
| Unreliable margins | You cannot trust product profitability |
| Stock takes | Large unexplained adjustments |
Fixing the stock figures
- A leak review comparing sales, usage and deliveries with a few spot counts to find the biggest sources of drift.
- Electronic goods-in using your wholesaler's delivery file, so deliveries are booked into your practice management system accurately.
- Pack size and product clean-up, fixing mismatches between the wholesaler's units and your system's units.
- Car and branch stock recorded as separate locations, with transfers logged.
- Rolling counts of a few high-value or high-risk lines each day.
- Order suggestions from the corrected figures, reviewed by a person before the order is placed.
Missed charges are often part of the problem. We can combine this with a missed charge check if that is where your leaks are.
An order based on real numbers
Once the leaks are closed and counts are running, the suggested order becomes believable. Running out becomes rare. Overstock falls. The daily order becomes a quick review rather than a walk around the building.
The stock take stops producing surprises, because the rolling counts have been correcting figures all year. And the margin figures in your practice management system start to mean something, which makes pricing and buying decisions easier.
Vets notice it too. The product they reach for is on the shelf, and when it is not, they know the system flagged it and an order is coming.
Are your stock numbers like this?
- Nobody trusts the stock figures in your practice management system
- Deliveries are put away before being booked in
- Vets take stock for their cars without recording it
- Stock takes produce large unexplained differences
- Orders are placed by walking the shelves