Inventory! From a PM last fall:
"Printing out that guide is the first step. The first time doing this is hard and you should get some help counting things. Take a look at the guide and you'll see all of the items that you'll have to count, plus a ton of other items that might be sold at other Targets, any items sold within the last couple of years, or any items that have a DPCI tied to it but arent' actually items (like a DPCI to ring up a free item as part of a BOGO). There are TONS of barcodes on the guide that you won't even have to scan. You won't even know what some of them are.
There are a lot of things where they tell you to estimate and plenty more where an estimation won't hurt. For instance, they tell you to estimate large cases if items (such as a case of 96 pizza dough disks). Then there are things that don't seem to matter if the on hands are exact - it doesn't matter if I have 18 or 19 bottles of vanilla syrup, so I'll actually fill out a pretty good portion of the guide without even counting it because I have an idea of how many I have on hand.
The biggest mistake I made for my first inventory is that I counted all of the items in department 260, which is all of the Starbucks supplies like paper cups, stir sticks, lids, all kinds of things. I spent tons of time counting it and then realized it's not even on the guide at all.
You should also check to see if you are responsible for the photo inventory. My store just has the Kodak Kiosk and the Starbucks TL has always done the inventory for it. There are only a few items so it just takes a minute.
So after you've familiarized yourself with the guide a bit, you can actually count stuff. There are items that I keep in two or more places, so I write the counts next to each other but not in the box yet; I reserve the box for the final count when I add those numbers up.
You can start scanning after 8PM. In myWork, it should give you the option to do TINV after you scan an item. When you're done scanning, you have to remember to go to workbench and go to some TINV page; you should be able to get a link to it if you search for TINV best practice in workbench. Basically, you have to see if you counted everything that they expected you to count. There will be items left on this report that you didn't have so you didn't count them. I've seen a discontinued pastry on it before (of course I didn't count that stupid thing, it didn't even exist anymore!), so I had to go and click on a button that said it didn't need to be counted.
The best thing about doing it with a myDevice is that it will tell you if you have on hands of it when you're counting it. There are some items that seem to have indistinguishable names (lots of syrups have an east and a west version, but some don't say east or west in the name), so you need to scan it just to see which one you have and then enter a count for that one and leave the other blank.
Yeah there's a TINV page on workbench that you need to go to in order to finish it. There are a few items that it expects you to count, but you didn't have any. You just have to go in and say that those items didn't need to be counted. That's the only follow up that I've ever heard of.
Starbucks is by far the most intense because it has the most things to count, but the counts for any of the beverage ingredients don't really matter because they generally can't be sold to guests anyway. The things that sort of matter are the mugs and tumblers and any of the RTD+E items (ethos water, white/chocolate milks, kind bars, caramel brulee bites, etc.) because those are essentially the same as the inventory for the rest of the store. Those items will have an expected number that you should have on hand. Beverage ingredients will have some estimated expectation because you are selling them in drinks and not by themselves (plus mistake drinks, samples, etc.). Don't worry about anything being 100% accurate, especially on your first time."
EDIT: This was part of a conversation, so some of mine are replies to questions he asked.
"Printing out that guide is the first step. The first time doing this is hard and you should get some help counting things. Take a look at the guide and you'll see all of the items that you'll have to count, plus a ton of other items that might be sold at other Targets, any items sold within the last couple of years, or any items that have a DPCI tied to it but arent' actually items (like a DPCI to ring up a free item as part of a BOGO). There are TONS of barcodes on the guide that you won't even have to scan. You won't even know what some of them are.
There are a lot of things where they tell you to estimate and plenty more where an estimation won't hurt. For instance, they tell you to estimate large cases if items (such as a case of 96 pizza dough disks). Then there are things that don't seem to matter if the on hands are exact - it doesn't matter if I have 18 or 19 bottles of vanilla syrup, so I'll actually fill out a pretty good portion of the guide without even counting it because I have an idea of how many I have on hand.
The biggest mistake I made for my first inventory is that I counted all of the items in department 260, which is all of the Starbucks supplies like paper cups, stir sticks, lids, all kinds of things. I spent tons of time counting it and then realized it's not even on the guide at all.
You should also check to see if you are responsible for the photo inventory. My store just has the Kodak Kiosk and the Starbucks TL has always done the inventory for it. There are only a few items so it just takes a minute.
So after you've familiarized yourself with the guide a bit, you can actually count stuff. There are items that I keep in two or more places, so I write the counts next to each other but not in the box yet; I reserve the box for the final count when I add those numbers up.
You can start scanning after 8PM. In myWork, it should give you the option to do TINV after you scan an item. When you're done scanning, you have to remember to go to workbench and go to some TINV page; you should be able to get a link to it if you search for TINV best practice in workbench. Basically, you have to see if you counted everything that they expected you to count. There will be items left on this report that you didn't have so you didn't count them. I've seen a discontinued pastry on it before (of course I didn't count that stupid thing, it didn't even exist anymore!), so I had to go and click on a button that said it didn't need to be counted.
The best thing about doing it with a myDevice is that it will tell you if you have on hands of it when you're counting it. There are some items that seem to have indistinguishable names (lots of syrups have an east and a west version, but some don't say east or west in the name), so you need to scan it just to see which one you have and then enter a count for that one and leave the other blank.
Yeah there's a TINV page on workbench that you need to go to in order to finish it. There are a few items that it expects you to count, but you didn't have any. You just have to go in and say that those items didn't need to be counted. That's the only follow up that I've ever heard of.
Starbucks is by far the most intense because it has the most things to count, but the counts for any of the beverage ingredients don't really matter because they generally can't be sold to guests anyway. The things that sort of matter are the mugs and tumblers and any of the RTD+E items (ethos water, white/chocolate milks, kind bars, caramel brulee bites, etc.) because those are essentially the same as the inventory for the rest of the store. Those items will have an expected number that you should have on hand. Beverage ingredients will have some estimated expectation because you are selling them in drinks and not by themselves (plus mistake drinks, samples, etc.). Don't worry about anything being 100% accurate, especially on your first time."
EDIT: This was part of a conversation, so some of mine are replies to questions he asked.
