DUKAANMATIC BUSINESS GUIDES
Negative stock: find the cause before changing the quantity
A stock report showing minus four units can be alarming when there are boxes on the shelf. The report is describing the transactions entered into the system, not counting the shelf. Before adding a balancing quantity, find out which movement is missing or recorded incorrectly.
Choose one item and one location
Start with the exact item code, variant, unit and storage location. Similar product names often hide different pack sizes. A carton of twelve and one loose unit cannot be treated as the same quantity without a clear conversion. Count the physical stock for the selected item and pause movements long enough to record a useful snapshot. Note the time of the count so a sale made afterwards is not mistaken for an error.
Rebuild the movement in date order
Read the opening quantity, purchases, sales, customer returns, supplier returns and adjustments in sequence. For example, an item starts with five units and seven are sold, producing minus two. If a delivery of ten units arrived before those sales but its purchase entry is missing, recording the genuine delivery would bring the balance to eight. Adding an unexplained two-unit adjustment would only hide part of the problem.
Look for timing and unit mistakes
Check whether goods were received before the supplier invoice was entered. Then check duplicate sales, a purchase saved under a near-identical item, returns recorded against the wrong location and a backdated transaction. If ten cartons were entered as ten units, correcting only the quantity may still leave the unit cost wrong. Review the source document and valuation as well as the number of pieces.
Correct the source with a clear explanation
Where the original transaction is wrong, use the supported correction or reversal workflow and preserve the document reference. If the difference is a genuine loss, damage or count variance, record an authorised stock adjustment with a reason and supporting count. Avoid deleting transactions that other records depend on. Someone checking the stock ledger later should be able to understand both the original mistake and the correction.
Stop the same problem returning
In DukaanMatic, make reviewing purchase entries, sales and stock movements part of the receiving routine. Assign one person to check units and item codes when goods arrive. Review frequently sold items more often than slow-moving stock, and keep damaged or returned goods separate until their status is decided. A small daily exception review is easier to maintain than a large month-end cleanup. Measure whether unexplained differences are falling, not simply whether the report has stopped showing a minus sign.