Loading opening stock when you start on the till
How a shop loads opening stock quantities and their value when it starts selling through Achekam's till, and why quantity and value are loaded separately.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Retail businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
The first day on a new till is exciting and slightly frightening. Everything that follows, every stock level, every margin report, every count difference, starts from the opening stock you load before that first sale. Get it right and the system tells you the truth from day one. Get it wrong and you spend months wondering whether a shortage is theft or a typing error from set-up week.
Opening stock has two parts that Achekam records in two different places: how many of each item you have, and what they are worth in your books. This article explains how to load both, why they do not connect on their own, and how to make them agree before the doors open.
Count first, then load
Do not load opening quantities from an old system's report, a supplier's last delivery note or a best guess. Count.
A good opening count:
- Pick a quiet moment. After closing the night before go-live, or on a day the shop is shut.
- Freeze movements. No deliveries put away and no sales during the count.
- Count by location. Shop floor, storeroom and any warehouse separately, if you will track them separately.
- Count in pairs. One counts, one records, and they swap for a second pass on high-value lines.
- Record the cost price for each product as you go, from the latest supplier invoice.
The count sheet becomes your opening stock list, and it is worth keeping with your year-end papers.
Opening quantities on each product in the Item Master
Products are created in the Item Master, in the Accounting menu, on the server. Each product carries a SKU, a name, a category, a selling price, a cost price, an opening quantity and a VAT treatment. The Item Master needs the Point of Sale, Warehousing or Wholesale add-on.
So the opening quantity is entered when the product is created. For a shop with hundreds of lines, plan the creation as carefully as the count: one person enters, another checks each product against the count sheet before the next batch.
Why opening quantities do not reach the ledger
Here is the part that surprises people. Stock counts, wastage, transfers and opening quantities do not post to the general ledger; only till sales and till returns move the inventory account.
In other words, entering an opening quantity of fifty kettles tells the till it has fifty kettles to sell. It tells your books nothing. The inventory account on your balance sheet does not move when products are created.
Then, when the first kettle is sold, the till posts a balanced journal that includes cost of sales against inventory at the product's cost price. Inventory is reduced by the cost of that kettle. If nobody has put an opening value into inventory, the account goes negative from the first sale.
The opening inventory value in the opening-balance journal
The value goes in through your opening balances. A business can bring in its accounts, customers, suppliers and an opening-balance journal from CSV or Excel; the move reconciles to the cent before a second person approves the cut-over. If you are already trading in Achekam, a manual journal does the same job, and an unbalanced one, or one dated in a closed month, is refused.
The inventory line of that journal should equal the value of your counted stock: for each product, the counted quantity times the cost price you will enter on the product, added up. Moving from spreadsheets to proper books is covered more broadly in moving the books off spreadsheets.
Making quantity and value agree before the first sale
Before the first customer, check that the two records describe the same stock:
| Check | How |
|---|---|
| Every counted product exists in the Item Master | Compare the count sheet with the product list |
| Each opening quantity matches the count | Line by line, by a second person |
| Each cost price matches the count sheet | Line by line |
| Inventory in the ledger equals quantity times cost, in total | Add up the count sheet and compare with the inventory account |
If the totals differ, find out why before trading. After the first sale, every difference becomes harder to trace. Later corrections are made through counts for quantities and journals for value; counting is covered in running a stock take, and value corrections in writing off damaged, expired and missing stock.
Cost prices you will have to live with
Take extra care with cost prices at set-up, for two reasons.
First, cost of sales uses the single cost price typed on the product. There is no FIFO and no weighted-average costing, so whatever you enter is the cost of every unit sold.
Second, there is no screen today that lets you change a product's price, cost or VAT treatment after creating it, or deactivate it. A wrong cost price entered in set-up week stays wrong.
The IFRS Foundation's summary of IAS 2 Inventories explains how the cost of inventories is determined, which cost formulas may be used, and why stock is carried at the lower of cost and net realisable value. Your accountant can use it to agree with you what "cost" should mean for your opening stock: the latest invoice price, or something else, and whether transport and duties are included.
The same applies to selling prices and VAT treatment. Check them against your shelf labels before you save each product, especially items that carry a different VAT rate from the rest of the shop.
Before go-live, put the count sheet, the product list and the opening-balance journal side by side, and do not ring up the first sale until all three agree.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
