Restaurant Inventory Counting and Stock Management

Most inventory problems in a restaurant are not counting problems. The numbers are wrong because the walk-in, the bar fridge and the dry store are counted at different times by different people, against a list that no longer matches what is on the shelf. Fix the routine and the numbers follow.

The symptoms are familiar: a dish 86ed at 9 p.m. because nobody noticed the last tray of sulguni was gone, or a weekly count that never agrees with the system.

Decide who owns what before the first count

Inventory goes wrong fastest when everyone is responsible for it. Before you open a single count sheet, name three roles. They can be three people or one person wearing three hats in a small cafe, but the duties should be written down.

• The inventory owner sets how often each storage is counted and decides the low-stock thresholds.
• Shift leads run the counts at the agreed moment in the day, usually at close or before the morning prep.
• A manager reviews counts, approves or rejects them, and signs off on any threshold change.

The separation matters because of how counts work in Wox. A count does not change stock the moment it is typed in. It waits for a manager, and only an approved count moves the balance. The person who counts should not be the only person who checks.

Build storages that match the real kitchen

A storage in Wox is a physical place: the walk-in cooler, the freezer, the dry store, the bar back fridge, the wine room. Name them the way your team already talks about them. If the cooks say the cold room, do not call it Refrigeration Unit 1 in the system.

Then make sure every item lives somewhere. An item can sit in more than one storage, for example bottled water in the dry store and in the bar fridge, and Wox keeps a separate balance for each. Items that are not assigned to any storage are the ones that quietly drift out of every count.

1. 1Walk the kitchen and bar with a notepad and list every place where stock is kept overnight.
2. 2Create one storage in Wox for each of those places, using the names your team already uses.
3. 3Assign each item to the storage or storages where it physically sits.
4. 4Open the inventory items list, find the items marked as unassigned, and give each one a storage or remove it if you no longer stock it.
5. 5Repeat the unassigned-items check once a week, ideally on the day new items are most often added.

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Wox

Inventory Count

Walk-In Cooler · Downtown

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+ Count

Storages

Items

History

ItemOn HandParStatus

TTomatoes, Diced

4 cs24 csLOW

OOlive Oil, EVOO

8 gal6 galOK

CChicken Breast

12 lb30 lbLOW

MMozzarella

6 lb8 lbOK

AAP Flour

50 lb25 lbOK

BBasil, Fresh

1 bn5 bnLOW

⚠3 items below par level — reorder suggested

Set a count rhythm by risk, not by habit

Not everything needs counting every day. Count frequency should follow two questions: how quickly does this item move, and how much does it hurt when it is wrong? Beef, cheese, spirits and wine by the bottle are expensive and easy to lose. Flour, salt and paper napkins are not.

A common pattern for a Tbilisi restaurant serving lunch and dinner looks like this: proteins, dairy and the bar counted daily at close, produce two or three times a week, dry goods and packaging weekly, and a full stocktake at month end. Write your version down and keep it for at least a month before changing it, so you have something to compare against.

A count taken at a different point in the day is a different count, and comparing the two only produces noise.

Run a count from start to approval

Each count in Wox covers one storage. That is deliberate: when a number is off, you know which shelf to look at. The count records when the stock was physically walked, which matters if a sheet counted late last night is entered this morning.

1. 1Open Inventory, go to Count Sessions and choose Start a count.
2. 2Pick the storage you are counting and set Counted at to the time the shelf was actually counted, not the time you are typing.
3. 3Add a short note if it helps, for example weekly stocktake or back fridge only.
4. 4Open the count sheet and enter what is physically on the shelf for each item, in the item's unit.
5. 5Submit the count. It now shows as Awaiting review, and nothing in stock has changed yet.
6. 6A manager opens the count, checks the lines marked as overage or shortage, and either chooses Approve and apply or rejects it.

When the system shows what it expected, that figure was captured at the moment the line was counted. Approving a count applies the difference between counted and expected, not the counted number itself. The kitchen can keep selling while a count waits for review, and those sales are not erased when the count is approved.

Read the over and short report

The over and short report looks only at approved counts. It shows which items came in above or below expectation and what that gap is worth at the unit cost recorded at count time. Lines with no cost on record are left out of the value, which is a good reason to keep item prices current.

If the same item is short week after week, open its movement history. Wox records every movement for an item at a location, from receiving and POS sales to waste and count adjustments, each linked to its source. The pattern usually shows quickly: a heavy recipe, a delivery never received in the system, or a bottle poured but not rung up.

Catch low stock before service does

Counts tell you what happened. Low-stock control tells you what is about to happen. In Wox each item can have an alert point: the quantity at which someone needs to act. Set it high enough to cover the time a delivery takes to arrive, plus a margin for a busy evening.

Items at or below their alert point are flagged as low stock in the items list, and the dashboard shows how many there are. When an approved count confirms that an item has dropped to its alert point, Wox also sends a low-stock alert in the app and as a push notification. Alert points go stale: a new menu, a summer terrace or a supra booking for sixty can change demand overnight. The par levels guide covers how to think about target levels and when to revisit them.

1. 1Open the item, set its alert point in the item's own unit, and save. Start with the items that would stop a dish if they ran out.
2. 2Each morning, before prep starts, check the low-stock count on the dashboard and the flagged items for your location.
3. 3Check each flagged item against what you know about the next few days, such as bookings, events or a menu change.
4. 4Place the orders you need with your suppliers the same day, so a late delivery does not become an 86ed dish.
5. 5After any menu change or a jump in covers, review the alert points for the affected items and update them.

On paid plans that include the AI assistant, Wox Analyst can also suggest new stock levels from recent sales. It prepares the change and nothing is applied until you confirm it.

What good looks like after a month

• Counts are completed at the same checkpoint on every shift and at every location.
• Low stock is spotted in the morning review, not during dinner service.
• When a variance is large, a manager can point to a cause: a recipe, a receiving gap, an unrecorded waste event.
• The list of items without a storage is short or empty.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Counting at random times is the most common mistake, and the fix is simply a fixed checkpoint. The second is thresholds that were set once at opening and never touched again; review them whenever the menu or the season changes. The third is ignoring unassigned items, which is solved by a five-minute weekly cleanup.

For the bigger picture on why counts and costs drift, read our restaurant inventory management guide. To see how stock connects to recipes and margins, continue with recipe costing or look at the inventory feature.