Hello, i am not new to Quickfile, however I am new to the type of business I am now moving into, I am opening a retail dog shop, i do have an accountant, i am waiting to hear back from him, but i just wanted to reach out to see how others use quickfile.
For anyone that runs a retail shop, do you use quickfile for stock, when inputting the total value of a stock purchase, do you break it down per item etc.
Any other tips welcome
Hello @TheBarkHut
You may be worth querying this with your accountant as it may depend on what ever system you are using for your stock control.
I used to run a retail shop. I used QuickFile for book keeping but a separate EPOS system for actual stock control.
In QuickFile I would record:
At the end of each financial year I’d do a full stock take to ensure the EPOS stock levels are accurate, then it would give me the total value of my stock on hand (calculated from the stock level x cost price of each item). I then make a journal to credit “closing stock” (in the 5xxx purchases range) and debit “stock” (in the 1xxx assets range) on the last day of the financial year. This makes the final cost of sales for that year’s P&L report equal to the amount you spent on stock in the year (general purchases) minus what you had left at the end of the year, i.e. the cost price of the items you actually sold during that year.
For the second and subsequent year that stock journal would have two parts - credit closing stock/debit stock as above for the value you held at the end of this year, but then also debit “opening stock” and credit “stock” for the year end stock value from the previous year. That makes that year’s cost of sales equal to what you started off with, plus what you bought, minus what you had left at the end.
Thus your turnover T is the general sales total, the cost of sales C is what it cost you to buy those items, T-C gives your gross profit amount, then (T-C) divided by T gives your GP%.
Hello, thank you so much for this, but i do have to say that most of what you said is lost on me.
I do have some questions,
What EPOS system did you use.
I have been tagging all Stock purchases as STOCK, should i continue or tag as General Purchases.
Other then Quickfile at the moment, I don’t have any stock control system, its only a small dog food shop, should I been looking into a stock control system or would Quickfile and an EPOS system work fine.
what is it you do now, do you ever get involved with offering 121 help/support/advice on setting up a retail business, i have so many other questions
Regards
Gary
We used to use AirPOS, it was a monthly subscription service at the time but it looks like they’ve changed their pricing to a per-transaction pay-as-you-go model now.
The “stock” code is only needed for end of year adjustments - you should classify your purchases of stock-for-resale as “general purchases” and then adjust for stock on hand at the end of each year (or more frequently if you need to keep an eye on your GP%).
We were fine just with QuickFile and AirPOS even with 1000+ product lines - it was a bit of an effort getting everything set up in the catalogue to start with but I’m mainly a computer programmer by trade (my wife ran the actual shop) and I was able to code up a few bespoke shortcuts to mostly automate the process of updating the EPOS stock levels based on the electronic invoices we received from our suppliers and update the cost prices when they changed. Having accurate stock levels and cost prices in the EPOS means it can give you an immediate number for your total stock value at any time and can show you your actual gross profit margin over time. Which in turn means you’re less likely to be caught by surprise at year end when you find your GP% is lower than you thought because the supplier has been bumping up cost prices and you haven’t adjusted retail prices to compensate.