Excel For Retail

Description:

Goal of the chapter:

Explain why you need excel for retail, show excel for retail

Sunil hates math. He hates numbers. He was never very good with them. 

So after college, he decided that he would find a job in which he can meet people and talk them everyday. So he got a job in sales!

However, excel sheets and numbers followed him to this job also!

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Excels Sheets and registers are an important part of your job. You will help the manager to keep a record of everything - expenses made in the store, number of customers, their expenses and records, warehouse records, etc. 

The math will not be as difficult as Rocket Science - 

It will be quite simple and even an SSC student can do it! 

But, you have to make sure that you keep perfect records of everything. 

Let us look at a few excel sheets that you have to maintain.

1. Petty Cash 

This is like a basic expenses sheet. Buying tea/coffee for special customers, flowers, paying the extra cleaning staff, repairs, travel expenses for delivery boys, etc - these are some expenses that your store will make. 

In this sheet, you will write down all the expenses that you supervised. Note the exact amount and details of the expenses.  

Here is a screenshot of the petty cash sheet. 

2. Stock Inward-outward 

Salman Khan has the best action scenes ever! The villain can never surprise Salman Khan - he always knows where the villain is coming from. Salman Khan is always prepared for everything!

Let us call this sheet the Salman Khan sheet - this sheet will make sure that you are never surprised by what is happening in the store. 

This is the most important sheet that you have to maintain. As the name suggests, when you accept new stock or send away some goods back to the company, you have to make a detailed entry in this sheet. 

Hence, like Salman Khan, you will know exactly what is going on where in your store. You will know what goods to order, what goods to send away, what goods you have with you, etc. 

Here is a screenshot of this sheet -  

3. Competitive Data Sheet

We are going to call this Sheet the “Gunday Sheet”

Bikram and Bala (Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor) fight for Priyanka Chopra in the movie. 

Similarly, you will fight other brands and companies for profit and customers. 

Look at this image: 

All these brands and retail stores come under Aditya Birla Group. But, they are also competitors. 

Hence, every store maintains an excel sheet in which they compare their data with data of their competitors. Competition inspires the stores to do their best and earn more. 

For example, if Louis Philippe is doing better than Allen Solly, then the management will help Allen Solly to do better by training, etc. 

4. Walk-in data 

The most important thing in retail stores is how many customers visit the store everyday. Everything depends on this: If the customers don’t visit the store, then the sales executives can’t sell anything. 

Hence, it is also important to make sure that there are enough ‘walk-in’s’ in the store everyday. The number of walk-ins depends on:

1. Advertising and marketing by company - New ads or new marketing campaigns will attract the customer towards the store

2. Location of store - Good locations like malls and bigger cities have more walk-ins

3. Time - Weekends, sales and festivals are goods time for the store. There are more walk-ins during these times. 

4. Customer experience - If the customers have visited the store in the past and they had a good experience, they will visit again and the walk-ins will increase. 

Simple funda - The more the walk-ins, the better it is. 

Hence, stores maintain this information as well to stay at the top of their game.

Key Takeaways: 

1. Working at a retail store involves working with data and excel sheets.

2. Petty Cash sheet - In this sheet, all the details of all the cash expenses and incomes are maintained.

3. Stock inward-outward sheet - Details of all the goods brought in the store and sent out are maintained in this sheet.

4. Competitive sheet - In this sheet, the figures of your store as compared to competitor's stores are recorded.

5. Walk-ins sheet - In this sheet, the total number of customers for each day is maintained. 

Up Next: 

With this chapter, we are done with the operations that you have to learn. The next step is acquiring product knowledge.