Stock Counting for Volunteers: The Ten-Minute Routine

The clubhouse fridge has a volunteer problem that has nothing to do with money. Somebody has to notice the cola is running low before Saturday, buy more, put it in, and ideally know whether the last crate went out as sales or walked off.

In most clubs this is one person, it lives in their head, and it stops working the week they go on holiday.

Count what is there, not what was sold

The instinct is to track sales. Do not. Sales are the thing you cannot see. What you can see, in twenty seconds with the door open, is what is on the shelf right now.

Count the shelf. Write it down. That is the whole discipline. If you know there were 24 colas last Tuesday and there are 9 today, 15 left the fridge. Whether 15 were paid for is a different question, and one you can answer only if the sales are recorded somewhere.

Same day, same person, same order

A count is only useful next to the previous count, so make them comparable. Pick a day that suits the week's rhythm, often the evening before the big training night. Count in the same order every time: top shelf left to right, then the next. Ten products takes about three minutes.

Write it down somewhere that is not a phone note. A phone note belongs to the phone's owner. The count belongs to the club.

Write the restock the moment it happens

This is the step that most clubs miss and the one that makes the numbers make sense. When someone puts a crate in the fridge, it has to be written down then and there, with a date and a number: "Thursday, +24 cola".

If the restock is not recorded, next week's count says the fridge somehow gained cans, and the whole record becomes something nobody trusts. Once it is untrusted, nobody keeps it.

Know your reorder line

For each product, decide how low it can go before someone has to shop. For a club that sells about 20 colas a week and shops on Saturdays, the line is roughly a week's worth plus a margin, say 12. Under 12 on Tuesday means buy on Saturday.

Write the line next to the product. Now anyone can look at the shelf and know whether to shop, not just the one person who carries it in their head.

Let the fridge keep its own ledger

Everything above works on paper. It works better when the fridge records its own sales, because then the count is a check rather than the only source of truth.

With Bippa every sale is recorded when the buyer pays with MobilePay, so stock goes down on its own. A volunteer logs a restock in a few taps, does a count when they feel like it, and every line has a who and a when. When a product falls under its line, it is flagged in the overview before the weekend, so the shopping is decided by the numbers rather than by whoever happens to open the door on Friday.

The count still matters. It is the moment you find out whether 15 cans out means 15 cans paid, or where the honesty fridge is leaking. It just stops being the only thing standing between the club and an empty shelf on match day.