Stock management for Dashain: how shops avoid running out

Dashain and Tihar are the weeks most shops in Nepal plan the whole year around. Customers come in with money to spend and a list. And every year, somewhere around the second week, the same thing happens: the one product everybody wants is gone, the supplier needs three days, and the customers buy it from the shop next door.

Running out is rarely bad luck. It is almost always a counting problem — nobody noticed the shelf getting thin until it was empty. Here is how to stop that happening this season.

Know your real best sellers before the rush

Most shopkeepers can name their best sellers from memory. Memory is usually half right. It remembers the product that sold in a big burst once, and forgets the quiet one that sells three a day, every day.

Before you place your festival order, look at what actually sold during the last few weeks and during last year's festival if you have it. Write down your top twenty products. Those twenty are where running out costs you money. The other hundred can wait.

If your sales live in a bill book, this takes an evening with a calculator. If they live in software, it should take a minute.

Set a reorder level for every product that matters

A reorder level is a simple number: when the stock of this product falls to this count, order more. It is the single most useful habit in stock management, and most small shops have never written one down.

How to choose it:

• Think about how many you sell on a busy day during the festival.
• Think about how many days your supplier takes to deliver.
• Multiply the two, and add a little for the day the delivery is late.

If you sell around ten a day at Dashain and your wholesaler in Kathmandu takes three days, a reorder level somewhere around thirty to forty gives the new stock time to arrive before the last one goes. These are your numbers to judge, not a formula to trust blindly — but writing any number down beats having none.

Order in two rounds, not one

The safest festival order is not one big order a month before. It is two.

The first round covers your proven sellers, two to three weeks ahead. The second round goes in during the first busy week, once you can see what this year's customers are actually buying. Your money goes into what is moving, not into a guess, and you are not left with a cupboard of last year's colours in Mangsir.

The second round only works if you notice early — which is the whole point of the reorder level.

Count the fast movers every evening

During the festival weeks, the stock that matters changes by the hour. A weekly count is too slow.

Every evening, check your top twenty against their reorder levels. Anything at or below the line gets ordered that night, by phone or WhatsApp, so it is on the road in the morning. It takes ten minutes, and it is the ten minutes that saves the second week.

Keep the count honest

A reorder level is only as good as the stock number it is compared with. The count goes wrong in a few predictable ways:

• Sales that never get recorded. A busy counter skips writing down the small sales.
• Online orders counted separately. Orders from Facebook or a website come out of the same shelf, but often live in a different notebook.
• Damaged and returned items that are never taken off or put back.
• Deliveries that arrive but are never entered.

Each one makes the number on paper drift away from the number on the shelf, until the reorder level fires too late — or never.

Where software helps

This is the part that is tedious by hand and easy for a computer, because it is only counting.

In BaseBlock, every sale at the till and every order from your website takes its items off stock as it happens, so the count stays honest without anyone writing it down twice. Each product can carry its own reorder level. When the stock reaches it, the product appears on a low-stock list on your dashboard and at the till, and you are told by text and email if you have connected them — once a week per product, so a busy day does not bury you in messages. When the new goods arrive and you receive them, the stock goes up and the warning clears.

It is the same evening count described above, done for you, every time stock moves. You can see the rest of what it covers on the features page.

Your Dashain checklist

• List your top twenty products from real sales, not memory.
• Give each one a reorder level based on festival sales and delivery time.
• Place the first order two to three weeks before Dashain.
• Check the fast movers every evening and reorder the same night.
• Record every sale and every delivery, online and at the counter.
• Use the second-round order to cover Tihar too.

Running out of your best seller in the festival is the most expensive mistake a shop can make, because it costs you a customer who came ready to buy. A little counting before the rush is cheap insurance.

[Try BaseBlock free and set your reorder levels before the rush →](/login)