Slow in Sharjah, selling in Ajman: move the stock, not the money

Imagine two grocery branches, one in Al Nahda, Sharjah, the other in Ajman, fifteen minutes apart. The Sharjah shop has 20 jars of a particular honey on the top shelf; none has sold in seven weeks. In Ajman the same honey sells every day, the shelf is nearly empty, and the manager is about to order another carton from the supplier.

The business pays twice: once for the jars sitting in Sharjah, and again for the new carton in Ajman. Neither manager is wrong; each sees only their own shop. The owner is the only person who could see both, and the owner is rarely looking at honey.

From "slow here" to "sells there"

CreekPOS already lists slow stock per branch: products with stock and no sale for 45 days (your setting), with the money they hold at cost. In a shop with two or more branches, each line on that list gets a Sells at column: every other branch where the same product has been selling, with what that means there.

Ajman: 1.5 a day · 3 on hand · 2.0 days of cover → move 12 [Create transfer]

• The rate: how many a day it sold there over the reorder period.
• What that branch holds, and its days of cover: on hand ÷ rate. Three jars at 1.5 a day last two days.
• The quantity to move.

How the quantity is worked out

It is plain arithmetic, using the numbers the reorder already uses. These are example figures.

1. What Ajman needs. The reorder keeps a number of days of stock for each product, from the supplier's lead time, how often you order and a safety margin. Say that is 10 days: 1.5 × 10 = 15 jars, minus the 3 on hand and anything already on order = 12.
2. What Sharjah keeps. The sending branch keeps what it still expects to sell over its own days, so a slow product that still sells now and then is never emptied out. For a honey that has not sold in seven weeks, that is nothing.
3. What is spare: Sharjah's 20 jars minus what it keeps, so all 20.
4. The move: the spare is shared between the branches that need it, the biggest need first, never more than a branch needs. Ajman gets 12, and 8 stay in Sharjah.

If the honey cost AED 14 a jar, that is AED 168 of stock that starts selling again, and a carton Ajman does not need to buy this week.

One tap to the transfer note

• Create transfer makes the transfer for that one product.
• Above the list, one line per receiving branch says, for example, "3 product(s) could move to Ajman", with Move all suggested to Ajman, which puts every suggested product into one transfer.

Both open the numbered transfer note, ready to print and send with the goods. The stock leaves Sharjah and reaches Ajman in the same step, and the slow-stock list, the alerts and the reorder see the moved stock at once.

It reminds you

• The weekly slow-stock owner alert adds a line such as "3 product(s) could move to Ajman".
• The owner's summary e-mail lists, under the slow-stock table, lines such as "Sharjah: 3 product(s) could move to Ajman", and the Telegram summary carries them too.
• Ask your shop: "what should I move to Ajman" lists the slow stock of your other branches that sells there, the biggest value first.

Good to know

• It never moves anything on its own. A person presses the button.
• The transfer is immediate. There is no "on the way" step: the stock changes branch when the transfer is made. Make it when the goods leave, and have the receiving branch check them against the note.
• Only where it sells. A branch is suggested only when the product is active there, its stock is kept there, and it sold there in the reorder period.
• The right people. Making the transfer needs the stock right; a branch manager sees the moves out of and into their own branches.
• It is not AI. It is the reorder's arithmetic applied to the slow list, and every number on the line can be checked.
• Where: CreekPOS Online, for shops with two or more branches; branch transfers come with the Chain plan. The buy-once desktop program runs one shop with one stock, so it has no branch moves.

Tips

• Agree a weekly transfer day, so moves ride with a trip that happens anyway.
• Move before you reorder: open the other branch's slow-stock list before approving a new order.
• After a move, give the product a good place on the receiving branch's shelf, where its buyers already look.

See stock moves on the smart stock page, finding dead stock and the stock alerts chapter of the manual.