Kits and sets: three ways to count stock when parts also sell alone

A paint set holds twelve half pans. Each pan also sells alone as a refill. The stock sheet shows one number for the pan, and every set sold draws from it without anyone saying so.

The same trouble hits cross-stitch kits with floss skeins and aida cloth, sewing boxes with bobbins and hoops, and hampers with a jam jar sold loose. The oversell is quiet. It shows up as a late parcel.

Three counting methods cover almost every shop. Each one trades extra effort at the bench against a different kind of mistake at the till, and the sections below take them in turn.

Pack the kits ahead. A pack job moves parts out of loose stock and adds finished kits under a code of their own. Customers see the kit count. The shelf count shows only loose parts.

This is quick at the till and easy to explain, and it suits kits that sell steadily with identical contents every time. The oversell comes from skipped pack jobs. A batch of kits gets built, nobody records it, and the loose count still claims parts that are already inside boxes. A barcode on the kit box, scanned at dispatch, drops the kit count by one without anyone typing.

The pack-job gap report catches it. Count the packed kits on the shelf and set them against the pack jobs logged this month, because any gap means somebody built a tray without recording it.

The kit holds no stock of its own. It is a list of one tin of gouache, two brushes, one pad and one sleeve, and the shop shows as many kits as the scarcest part allows.

It recalculates after every sale. That is also where the oversell lives. A buyer of the kit and a buyer of the single brush can claim the last brush a minute apart. Parts shared between several kits make it worse.

Reserve the part when a basket is created, release it if the basket is abandoned, and run a limiting-part report that names what holds each kit count down.

Nothing is pre-packed. Each order opens a build ticket, a picker pulls the parts, and the box is closed at the bench. Watch the parts already committed.

It suits hampers with seasonal parts, art sets that buyers customise and any kit whose contents change each month. The oversell is a dispatch date you cannot meet, because a part was committed twice or is still on order from the supplier.

Compare on-hand parts with committed parts. Sort the oldest orders to the top. When the committed total passes the on-hand total for any part, stop selling kits that use it and say so on the page.

Choose by two facts. How fast do the parts sell alone? How long does one kit take to pack? Quick loose sales and short packing favour a build ticket, steady kits with fixed contents favour a packed count, and shared parts push you towards a bill of parts.

Pull one week of sales for your best-selling set and for each of its parts sold alone, then write down the parts per kit. Then run the matching report. Read it every Monday for a month, and write each answer on the worksheet instead of keeping it in your head.

Change method only when the same gap shows up three Mondays running, because one bad week may only be a miscount.