Counting the shelf
Reconciling what RewireBox thinks with what's actually there, and reading the gap instead of just closing it.
2 min readUpdated August 14, 2026Managers
Every salon loses stock. Bottles get used on clients and not recorded, a delivery gets counted optimistically, something goes home in a bag. None of that is unusual, and none of it is fixable until you know how much.
Counting is how you find out. There's no single stock-take sheet in RewireBox — you recount a product at a time, from the product itself.
Doing a count
- 1
Pick a scope. A category, a brand, or your top sellers. Counting everything at once is the reason counts stop happening.
- 2
Count the shelf first, on paper. Before you look at the screen — knowing the expected number changes what you count, every time.
- 3
Open each product, press Adjust stock, choose Recount.
- 4
Enter what you counted — the corrected on-hand total for that location, not the difference.
- 5
Note anything with a real gap before you move on. The number will be right in a moment; the reason won't be recorded anywhere unless you do it.
Recount is deliberately the total rather than an adjustment. You counted eleven; you type eleven. Whether that's up two or down three is arithmetic the system should be doing, and it keeps the ledger honest about what the figure was before.
Reading the gaps
A count that comes out perfect tells you very little. The useful output is the pattern in what didn't.
- One product, consistently short. Usually back bar — somebody is using the retail bottle. The fix is a back-bar product to record it against, not a tighter count.
- A whole delivery's worth missing. Look for a delivery booked in twice, or booked in at the wrong location.
- Small, everywhere. Normal. Set your expectations rather than hunting it.
- Expensive things only. Worth a quiet conversation, and the refund and inventory anomaly checks are the place to start rather than an accusation.
What the product watches for you
Inventory anomalies on the insights screen scans the last 30 days for large recounts, heavy use of the catch-all Other adjustment, and professional-use spikes. It's the same reasoning as a count, run continuously and without the evening.
It doesn't replace counting — it can only see what was recorded, and the whole problem with missing stock is that it wasn't.
Common questions
Is there a stock-take screen?
Not as a single count sheet — you recount product by product, from each product's Adjust stock. On a salon-sized catalogue that's a surprisingly workable evening; on a large one, count in batches by category.
Do I enter the difference or the total?
The total. Recount asks for the corrected on-hand count for that location — what you actually counted — and RewireBox works out the difference itself.
Won't recounting hide the problem?
Only if you don't look first. The recount is recorded as its own movement with the figure it replaced, so the gap stays visible in the ledger after the number is corrected.
How often should we count?
Monthly on your fastest movers and the expensive things; quarterly on the rest. Counting everything twice a year finds problems far too late to do anything about them.
Something's genuinely gone — broken or out of date.
That isn't a recount. Use Expiry write-off for out-of-date stock, so it lands in your figures as waste rather than as a mystery.
Related articles
- Stock levelsProducts · What the number on the shelf means, every way it can move, and the ledger that tells you why it changed.
- What's selling, and what's worth sellingProducts · The insights screen that flags thin margins, coming stock-outs and duplicates — and the five reports that tell you what actually moved.
- Ordering moreProducts · Suppliers, raising an order, letting RewireBox work out what's low — and where the stock actually gets booked in.
Can’t find what you’re looking for?
Book a 20-minute walkthrough and we’ll answer it on a screen share — or start free and try it on your own salon’s data.