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Inventory control

How to stop stockouts with reorder points (not guesswork)

Set a low-stock threshold, review the alert list every morning, and convert shortages into a purchase order. The workflow CountOS uses for Pakistani retailers.

By CountOS Team, ZIIBAY SOFT 7 min read

CountOS low-stock list with red quantities and a configurable threshold
Four SKUs at or below the default threshold of 20 — this is the list a buyer should open before they leave for the market.

Stockouts in a Pakistani retail or wholesale shop are rarely a surprise. The item has been thin for a week. Nobody looked. The owner hears about it from a customer. Reorder points exist so that moment happens on a screen in the morning, not at the counter in the afternoon.

A reorder point is a number, not a feeling

For each fast mover, pick the quantity that means “buy now”: reorder point ≈ (daily sales × lead days) + safety stock.

Example: you sell 8 units of hand soap a day. The supplier delivers in 3 days. You want 2 days of cover if the van is late. Reorder point = (8 × 3) + 16 = 40. When on-hand hits 40, the item appears on the low-stock list. You do not wait for zero.

Slow movers get a lower point. Dead stock gets a point of zero and a question: why is it still on the shelf?

The daily habit that actually works

  1. Open the dashboard. Read the low-stock count before you open WhatsApp.
  2. Open the low-stock report. Sort by the items that pay the rent, not by SKU code.
  3. Convert the list to a purchase — one click in CountOS, not a rewritten notebook.
  4. When goods arrive, post the GRN or POS purchase so the alert clears itself.

If the alert stays after you “bought” the goods, the receive was never posted. That is a process bug, not a software bug.

CountOS dashboard low-stock alert tile next to inventory value
Low-stock is a first-class KPI on the CountOS dashboard, not a report you remember once a month.

Thresholds: one default, exceptions for heroes

CountOS lets you set a default low-stock quantity (20 in the screenshot above) and still treat individual SKUs differently. Use the default for the long tail. Raise it for the 20 items that stop the shop if they hit zero — cooking oil, cement bags, the battery size everyone asks for.

Do not set every SKU to 1 “so the list stays short.” A short list that is already too late is worse than a longer list you review in five minutes.

Why Excel reminders fail

A yellow cell in Excel only updates if someone typed yesterday’s sales. After a busy Saturday, the sheet is stale and the owner stops opening it. A stock ledger that updates on every posted sale does not need that discipline. The reorder list is a query over live quantity, not a homework assignment.

Purchasing still needs a human

Software should not auto-buy. Prices change. A supplier is out. You may want to combine two items on one van. CountOS stops at reorder-to-purchase: it builds the order; you approve it. That is the right split of labour for most Pakistani SMEs.

What to measure after 30 days

  • How many times a top-20 SKU hit zero.
  • How many low-stock lines sat untouched for more than 48 hours.
  • Whether inventory value went up because you over-bought safety stock.

If value jumps and stockouts stay, you raised the wrong thresholds. Tighten the tail; protect the heroes.

See the stock and reorder modules on the features page, or book a demo and we will set thresholds on your top 20 SKUs live.

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