Valuing your store
Store valuation is an important practice for both insurance and taxation purposes, and regular valuation directs good stock maintenance. Don’t leave it to the last minute on the financial year to learn about valuation!
We get an items value by multiplying the cost of the item with the quantity you have on hand, and then summing all of your item values to get a Grand Total. We offer Grand Totals on both your Last Cost (sometimes known as true cost in the industry) and your Average Cost (which is your Last Cost over time, which is technically more correct for valuation purposes, though it may only manifest itself as a small difference in the real world).
Mountaintop POS provides valuation reporting and rejection reporting, both of which require attention. The reports can be run quickly via the Reports > Reports Central > Stocktake / Value & Purchases tab. When running the Valuation report, we can back date the report to what the valuation was at the time. The first window provides instructions on how to do so. At the very bottom of either report is the Grand Total.
Keeping your rejections in check is vitally important, as these are lines which have purposefully been rejected from the valuation. Stores with large numbers of rejections can not hope to get an accurate valuation from the POS, and it is usually indicative of neglect in stock on hand maintenance or poor stock metadata (which can also be the result of neglect). Our support technicians can help you with diagnosing the cause of poor stock metadata and rectifying the issue, however there is no magic involved, and it can mean a lot of work for your staff if it is the result of years of misuse or neglect.
Mountaintop POS will reject lines from the valuation report for a number of reasons.
1. Stock on hand is in negative
2. No cost price
3. No average cost (cost over time)
4. Radical values
Additionally items may not be included as you may not have set your filtering correctly. Read the filtering page for helpful tips and info on this.
Rejections for any reason can all be corrected in the stock cards, and this should be attended to as part of your stock take prior valuation. Stores which have good maintenance practices and are good about updating shrinkage and receiving invoices should see very few rejections and often don’t require store-wide stock takes. We also offer unique and cost effective hardware solutions which save you thousands by allowing you to both easily maintain your stock and do a store-wide stocktake in house where required.
Below is a (very) short sample valuation report, which shows the Grand Total figure at the bottom. This is the figure you would report to your tax agent or accountant and to your insurance company as the value of your store. Note the discrepancies between the Average and Last Costs, and how the Shrinkage is accounted for. The rejections report looks very similar, however the goal with the rejections report is to have as few lines being rejected as possible! If items are showing up, they should be addressed.
