Track shrinkage

Shrinkage is stock you owned that’s no longer there and didn’t sell — lost to damage, miscounts, mishandling or theft. Measuring it is the first step to reducing it.

Where shrinkage shows up

Shrinkage surfaces through negative adjustments and count discrepancies — every time real stock falls short of the system. The shrinkage report (under Reports) gathers these so you can see the total and the pattern.

Read it by reason

Because every adjustment carries a reason, you can break shrinkage down:

• Damage — handling and storage problems
• Count corrections — process or training gaps
• Unexplained — the bucket to watch hardest; this is where theft hides

Find the pattern

• By product — one SKU shrinking repeatedly: a barcode collision, or a target for theft.
• By location — one bin always short: mislabeled, or poorly placed.
• By time — a spike in one week or one shift: a process change or a person.

Act on it

Fix the cause, not the number. A mislabeled bin gets relabeled; a fragile product gets better packaging; an unexplained pattern gets investigated.

Tip: a little shrinkage is normal. A rising trend, or a single SKU or location shrinking again and again, is the signal worth chasing.