Stock Takes Step by Step
A stock take lets you compare what you expect to have on your shelves against what is physically there. In Dines, this runs through a clear lifecycle, so your team always knows whether a count is still open, being reviewed, or finished and locked in.
You'll find Stock Takes under Stock Management in your Dines Dashboard. This guide walks through each stage, from opening a new stock take to reviewing the variance and updating your stock levels.
On this page
Stock Take States
A stock take moves through five states as your team works through it.
| Draft | The stock take has been created but not yet started. You can still add or remove ingredients, and adjust settings, at this stage. |
| Not Started | The stock take is configured and ready to begin. No counts have been entered yet. |
| In Progress | Counting is underway. Your team is entering physical counts for each ingredient, and you can pause and resume as needed. |
| In Review | All counts have been submitted. The variance between expected and counted stock is shown here for you to review before finalising. |
| Complete | The stock take has been approved and finalised. Stock levels are updated to reflect the counted quantities, and this state is permanent. |
Running a Stock Take
Once you've created your stock take in Stock Management and chosen which ingredients to include, either every ingredient or just the ones you need to check, it's worth deciding whether to turn on blind count mode. This hides the expected stock level from whoever is doing the count, and we cover it in more detail below.
Before you start counting, please pause any deliveries due to arrive. Stock that comes in mid-count will shift your expected levels and throw off your variance figures. When you're ready, use the Start action to move the stock take to In Progress. Recording a count on its own doesn't change the status, so please make sure you've started it first. Your team can then enter the physical count for each ingredient.
Once every count has been submitted, the stock take moves to In Review, where you can check the variance report. This shows the difference between the expected stock level and what was actually counted, for each ingredient. When you're happy with the counts, please mark the stock take as complete. This locks it permanently and updates your stock levels to match what was counted.
Please leave deliveries paused until the stock take reaches In Review or Complete. Once you're there, it's safe to resume receiving stock as normal.
Blind Count Mode
When blind count mode is switched on, the expected stock level and variance are hidden from whoever is entering the count. This keeps the physical count independent, since there's nothing on screen to be influenced by while counting.
You can turn blind count mode on or off at any point, right up until the stock take is marked Complete, so please feel free to adjust it to suit how your team prefers to work.
Stock Take Permissions
Stock take actions can be protected with a PIN. Three permissions cover stock takes specifically:
| Create Stock Take | Starting a new count. |
| Perform Stock Take | Doing the counting. |
| Manage Stock Take | All three actions together: starting a count, performing it, and deleting it. |
These sit within the wider Stock section of your role permissions, which holds twelve entries in total, covering recipes, deliveries, wastage, stock takes and purchase orders. This lets you, for example, allow your whole team to perform a count while reserving creating or deleting one for a manager.
A permission only takes effect once you've also ticked the same action at Settings > Team > PIN Protection. Until then, everyone can use it, whatever their role says.
Margins Not Calculating
If your margin figures aren't showing on a stock take, two things need to be in place: a cost price on each ingredient, and a recipe linking your menu items to those ingredients.
Where an ingredient has no cost price (or a cost price of zero), or a menu item has no recipe attached, there's nothing for us to calculate a margin from, so the figure will appear blank or incomplete. Please check the ingredient's cost price in Stock Management, and confirm the item's recipe is linked.
If both of those are in place and your margins still aren't showing, please get in touch and we'll take a look at your setup.
If you have any questions or feedback, or a Knowledge Base article you would like to see, please get in touch.
