Counting stock on the tablet

Counting used to mean the back office, which in practice means a laptop balanced on a crate — and the storeroom is the one place in a venue where the wifi is worst.

A manager still opens the count in the back office (Inventory → Stock counts), because that is where the scope lives: the whole shop, one category, one supplier, or a list of products. It then appears on the terminal under Stocktake.

On the tablet you get the list of products in the count, uncounted ones first, a search box that also takes a barcode scan, and a number pad. Type what is on the shelf and tap Save. The header tracks progress — "38 of 120 counted" — and the count you just typed turns the row cyan.

Nothing needs a connection. Every count is written to the tablet first. If the wifi drops, the header shows how many are waiting to send and the ⧗ marks the rows; walk back into range, or tap Sync, and they go. A count you have taken is never overwritten by the server's blank — the one thing worse than a lost count is walking the shelf twice.

Two things worth knowing:

Zero is a count. "None on the shelf" is a real finding, and it posts a variance. A row nobody has reached shows "—", a row counted as empty shows "0". They are not the same thing and Aura never treats them as one.

A blind count shows you nothing. If the manager opened it blind, the expected figure is withheld — not hidden on the tablet, actually not sent to it. That is the point: you report the shelf rather than confirm the system, and a number on screen quietly becomes the answer.

Review and approve stay in the back office, because approving a count moves stock and money.