Whether your retail business operates one location or a dozen, store audits are an effective way to monitor how your store doing.
By examining the effectiveness of your displays, keeping your inventory in check, ensuring you’re presenting the best possible version of your store, and verifying thatinventory managementtasks are completed on schedule, store audits offer deep insights into your retail business.
With advancements in modern technology, store audits have taken on a new role for retail businesses and offer more insights than ever before. But for retailers that are new to store audits, the task can seem daunting.
In this guide, we’ll cover the benefits and process of completing a store audit for easy and quick insights into your retail store performance.
Keep reading to learn:
What is a store audit?
A store audit assesses the health of your retail location using data. Retailers, staff, or a third party combs through your store or pop-up shop to collect information on what’s working and what’s selling (or what isn’t).
Some retailers may use revenues as their primary success metric, but when you perform regular store audits, you have plenty of additional analytics to get a more comprehensive picture of your store’s health.
When performing a store audit, you’ll gain insights into:
- Sales volume
- Stock levels (inventory both on your shelves and back stock)
- Damaged products
- Assessments ofvisual merchandisingandin-store displays
- Summary of what your competitors are up to
- Planogramcompliance (shelf location, number of facings present, number ofSKUspresent, missing/inaccurate shelf tags)
- A look at yourpricing strategy
- In-store location of products
You also need to choose the type of audit that best suits your needs. Some of the most common types of store audits include:
- Market audit:Survey customers for brand sentiment, get a sense of how passersby interact with your store, and take a close look at what your competitors are up to.
- Merchandising audit:This type of report compiles all your inventory data. Highlight stock levels, the effectiveness ofproduct pricing, how products are displayed, the impact of your current visual merchandising, and product promotions.
- Loss preventionaudit:Is your currentloss prevention planworking? What products are stolen most? Where in your store are they stocked? What strategies are working and which aren’t?
Depending on the type of store audit you conduct and your goals, the frequency will vary. You may perform a quick spot check once a month or a more thorough audit once a quarter. Weigh your options and set up a game plan based on your business needs and your resources.
What are the types of retail audits?
There are four main types of retail audits:
- Loss prevention audit
- Competitive analysis
- Merchandising audit
- Health and safety audit
Manage inventory from one back office
Shopify POS comes with tools to help you manage warehouse and store inventory in one place. Forecast demand, set low stock alerts, create purchase orders, know which items are selling or sitting on shelves, count inventory, and more.
Why store audits are important
As the retail market changes, so do your business processes. Store audits may seem like a dated way to track your operations, but as your sales channels grow and become more complex, it’s important to stay on top of the goings-on in your retail business.
Retail cloud solution firmStorIQsums up this sentiment: “The store audit is a vital component ofretail operations. As retailers begin to implement omnichannel retail strategies andclick-and-collectcomes of age, store experience has become more important than ever. And it’s down to field teams to make sure the customer experience is top-notch.”
Keeping enough inventory to meet your in-store needs and any of the other channels you’re currently supporting requires up-to-date, accurate stock numbers. Not having enough stock in store and not having shelves set and displayed properly can make for a poor shopping experience, and store audits are one way that you can ensure customers walk through the best possible display experience in your stores.
Store audits are also fantastic opportunities to develop yoursales associates and retail staff. By using the results of the audit for more than just monitoring numbers, retailers can use the audit as a learning opportunity to work with their employees to better the business in general.
PRO TIP:Shopify POS makes it easy to track your store’s daily sales performance. View sales reports to keep tabs on average order value, items per order, net sales, sales per staff, and more. To get started,Sales reportsin Shopify admin.
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The benefits of a store audit
What specifically do you gain by doing a store audit? Aside from teaching your employees more about the day-to-day of your company’s business, here are some other potential store audit outcomes:
- Identifying and solving inconsistencies in visual merchandising and brand compliance
- Finding maintenance and operational issues
- Closing the loop on task management and outstanding responsibilities
- Creating and implementing new in-store processes andprocedures
- Providing a framework to evaluate financial metrics,retail KPIs, and team performance
- Build better relationships with your most important asset: your store managers and associates
- Foster positive competition between your stores
How to do a retail store audit
1. Schedule your store audit
Make sure you schedule enough time to complete the audit without disrupting the customer experience. The best time to complete audits is during slow times when you have enough staff to effectively finish the audit and still be able to maintain regular business.
You can also complete the audit while the store is closed, but keep in mind that would require scheduling extra resources outside of retail hours.
2. Determine your store audit goals
Come up with a list of objectives before you start the audit—what you hope to accomplish as well as areas that you think will require extra attention. Are your in-store displays looking less than ideal? Be sure to set aside an appropriate amount of time to analyze each display.
Don’t forget to include the exterior of your building in the audit as well. This is, after all, the first impression that your business makes on customers walking through the door—something as simple as a burnt-out light or overflowing garbage can could alter how someone views your brand.
3. Take thorough notes as you audit
As you go through the process of completing your audit, take comprehensive notes (or get the third-party vendor conducting your audit to do so).
Also take pictures as you go, documenting the audit results, so you can compare before and after pictures of the fixes as they’re made.
4. Delegate fixes to staff
Once you’ve completed your store audit, assign tasks to employees, contractors, or external agencies as soon as your resources and budget allow. Even if you can’t afford to make a change until the next quarter, getting it scheduled and on the books ensures that nothing is missed or left to pile up until the next scheduled audit.
PRO TIP:Only Shopify POS unifies your online and retail store data into one back office–customer data, inventory, sales, and more. Vieweasy to understand reportsto spot trends faster, capitalize on opportunities, and jumpstart your brand’s growth.
Retail store audit tools
Store audits can be time-consuming and difficult. What tools can you leverage to make it easier for you and your business?
To unload the task completely, look into companies that perform store audits in your area. Generally, businesses that specialize in this process will come to your retail location(s), conduct the audit, summarize the results, and provide you with either just the data or strategic recommendations based on their industry expertise.
If you’re looking to complete the audits internally but still need some help, consider working with a retail audit software provider likeCompliantia. These companies provide you with the resources you need to conduct quick and easy audits, including calendars, automated scorecards, action plans, and performance data over time.
This type of audit software also makes it easy to keep all your data organized and in one place and lowers the margin for human error often associated with manual checklists.
Store audits: Planning for the long term
After each audit, you’ll want to implement any fixes or changes as soon as possible and check the status during your next store audit. Regular store audits are also a great way to track your business over time—so be sure to look at the progress after each quarter and year.
Audit checklists are just one source of data that you can use to capture long-term progress, so be sure to compare audit results with inventory checks, sales over time, and resource allocations to get a bigger picture of your retail business.
Manage inventory from one back office
Shopify POS comes with tools to help you manage warehouse and store inventory in one place. Forecast demand, set low stock alerts, create purchase orders, know which items are selling or sitting on shelves, count inventory, and more.
