Inventory accounts for significant expense in any spa, salon or medi-spa. With the right reports and inventory management processes, you’ll be able to identify areas of excess expenditure and cut down on inventory shrinkage.This post highlights a powerful report, Expense By Category, in Zenoti that helps you quickly identify theft or wastage for both retail and professional products.

A Sample Expenditure Report For Your Retail Products

Let’s look at a sample actual vs expected spend report for retail products.

Zenoti calculates projected spend based on the value of the retail sales for the specified time period.  We calculate actual spend based on the retail products that were ‘checked-out’ from the back-bar. Or in other words, those products that were marked as ready for sale.This report shows us that this center sold $13,500 in retail for the month, out of which $6300 were hair care products. The Hair Care category shows a significant discrepancy, with an actual spend of $6300 compared to an expected spend of $5400.The most likely cause for any discrepancy in retail is theft. This report alerts you to possible areas where theft is occurring.

A Sample Expenditure Report For Your Professional Products

Now, let’s look at the same report, but for professional products (products used by your service providers during services).

Actual and expected spend rarely line up exactly when looking at professional products. Major discrepancies between actual and projected spend warn you of possible theft while smaller discrepancies typically reflect wastage during services. In the latter, you’ll want to train staff to use the right amount of product or adjust your baseline assumption for how much product you should be using for each service.Calculating expected and actual spend is different for professional products and retail products.

• The system calculates projected spend for professional products based on how many services were performed in a time period. And, combines this number with a baseline value on how much product(s) should be used for each service. For example, if you expect to use 3 ml for each women’s hair wash and you performed 1,000 hair washes for the month, then the system knows you should have used 3,000 ml of shampoo.

• The system calculates actual spend based on the amount of product that was checked out from the back-bar and accounts for the starting and ending volumes of products on the floor, for the specified time period. The system then converts the product volume or amount into a dollar value.

Look Out For These Tell Tale Signs

This report makes it easy for you to identify areas of extra spend on your inventory. If you see unexpected differences between the actual and projected spend, you might have shrinkage issues, process issues or need to address training for your staff.Learn more about controlling your inventory cost – Request a demo now!