New reports: what your stock is worth and what discounts cost you

What is new in the reports?

EasyTaskr reports now answer two questions wholesalers ask all the time: what is all my stock worth, and what are discounts costing me? You will find:

• Stock value at cost: what you paid for everything on your shelves.
• Stock value at selling price: what it would bring in if you sold it all at your normal prices.
• Margin in your stock: the gap between the two.
• Products priced below cost: listed by name, with what you would lose if the stock sold at that price.
• Sales before and after discount: what you would have taken at full price, what you actually took, and the discount in between.
• Profit by product, in the same place.

Every report exports to CSV for your accountant or your own spreadsheet.

What does "margin locked in your stock" mean?

It is the profit sitting on your shelves that you have not made yet. A worked example:

The margin locked in that stock is 4,754 − 3,810 = 944, which is 19.9% of the selling value. You only earn it if the stock sells at those prices. Stock that sits, spoils or gets discounted eats into it. The stock valuation guide explains why accounts use the cost figure.

How do discounts show up?

The reports separate two very different problems. A product priced below cost loses money on every sale, before any discount: the stock report lists it by name so you can fix the price. A product that is profitable at full price can still lose money once a discount is given: the before-and-after-discount figures show how much the discounts took.

For example, a carton of oil costs 4.20 and lists at 5.00. At full price it earns 0.80. Give a trade customer 20% off and it sells for 4.00, a loss of 0.20 on every carton. Sell 300 cartons that way and the discount has turned 240 of profit into a 60 loss. Our markup vs margin guide shows how to work out how much discount a margin can carry.

How are the stock figures worked out?

Every product in stock is counted once, at the cost and selling price on its product record. Four rules keep the figures honest:

The stock value is also broken down by category, so you can see which part of the range holds the most money and which carries the thinnest margin.

How do you read the Stock value report, step by step?

It takes about five minutes the first time. Here is the order that makes sense:

1. Open Reports, then Stock value. The headline reads like "38,120 of stock at cost, 47,300 at selling price (ex VAT)".
2. Read the potential profit chip. It shows the gap between the two values and the margin as a percentage of the selling value.
3. Check the note about missing cost prices. If it says some products have no cost price, they are left out of the profit and margin. Fill those costs in first; until you do, every other figure is incomplete.
4. Look at the category breakdown. Find the categories holding the most money at cost, and any with a margin far below the rest.
5. Scroll to Priced below cost. The heading shows how many products there are, and the line under it says what selling all of them would lose.
6. Work down the list from the top. It is sorted with the biggest loss first, and each row shows the product, how many are in stock, cost each, selling price each and the loss if all sold.
7. Open a product from the list. Each name links to the product, where you can correct the price or the cost.
8. Export to CSV if your accountant or a buyer needs the figures in a spreadsheet.

What should you do about products priced below cost?

First find out why the price is below cost. There are usually three reasons, and each has a different fix:

• The cost went up and the price did not. A supplier raised prices, the cost on the product was updated, and nobody changed the selling price. Put the price up, or decide deliberately to hold it for a while.
• The cost is wrong. A typing slip, a case cost entered as a unit cost, or the wrong unit. Correct the cost and the product drops off the list.
• It is on purpose. Clearing old or damaged stock, or matching a competitor on one item. That can be a sound decision, but it should be a decision. Write down why and when you will review it.

A worked example. Suppose the list shows three products:

The report would say selling all of it loses 74.75. Biscuits come first because they lose the most. Checking the last delivery shows the cost rose from 8.20 to 9.60 and the price stayed at 8.90. Raising the price to 10.70 puts the biscuits back to roughly a 10% margin on the selling price, and the next report no longer lists them. The kitchen roll turns out to be a deliberate end-of-line price, so it stays, with a note. The markup vs margin guide and the pricing guide show how to set a new price from a target margin.

How do you check what discounts cost, step by step?

Discounts live in a separate report, Discount insights, because they happen at the moment of sale rather than on the shelf:

1. Open Reports, then Discount insights.
2. Pick a date range. A month is a good first look; a quarter shows the pattern.
3. Read the discount given. This is the money that did not come in because of discounts, without VAT.
4. Compare it with what you could have charged. The report shows the sales before discount alongside the discount, so you can see what share of full-price sales was given away.
5. Set it against your margin. If you give away 6% of sales in discounts and your margin is 18%, a third of your margin went on discounts in that period.
6. Decide on one change and look at the same range next month.

Where do I find it?

Open Reports in EasyTaskr and choose Stock value or Discount insights. The stock figures use the cost and selling prices on each product, so check that your products have cost prices filled in. If a figure looks low, missing costs or an old stock count are the usual reasons; a quick stocktake fixes the second.