Selling supplements and drinks at the front desk
How a gym sells supplements and drinks from reception on Achekam's till, what each sale does to stock and the ledger, and where the stock figures drift.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Fitness businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
The fridge behind reception holds energy drinks and bottled water. The shelf above it holds tubs of whey, creatine and pre-workout, and a basket of protein bars sits by the card machine. Together they are a small shop, and like any shop they leak: a tub sold and not rung up, a delivery never counted, a case of drinks that went past its date in the storeroom.
This article explains how a gym runs that shop on Achekam's till, what each sale does to stock and to the books, and the places where the figures can drift if nobody is watching.
The till and the product list
The till comes with the Point of Sale add-on and sits under Commerce & POS. Without the add-on the till is not visible, and the server refuses till requests from a business that does not hold it.
Products are created in the Item Master, in the Accounting menu, with a SKU, name, category, selling price, cost price, opening quantity and VAT treatment. Treat that form as final. At the time of writing, no screen lets a business change a product's price, cost or VAT treatment after creating it, or deactivate it, so check every line before saving.
Two set-up habits pay off:
- Use the barcode as the SKU. No screen lets a business record a separate barcode, so a scanner at the till finds a product only when the scanned code matches its SKU. If you type the number printed under the barcode as the SKU, the scanner has something to match; if you invent your own codes, staff will be searching by name.
- Categorise properly. Drinks, supplements, snacks and merchandise as separate categories make the product list easier to search at a busy desk.
Each sale takes stock off at the till's location
A till sale takes the sold quantity off stock in the same step, at the till's location. Several tills can run at once, each opened at one of the business's stock locations, so a club with a reception till and a café till can keep the two stocks apart.
That makes the till's location the place your stock figure lives. A tub sold at reception comes off reception's stock, not the storeroom's.
What each sale posts
Every till sale that reaches the server posts a balanced journal in the same step: the payment to the account for its method, the sale to revenue, output VAT, and cost of sales against inventory at the product's cost price. Sell a protein bar and the books record its cost leaving inventory and landing in cost of sales.
There is a gap to know about. Stock counts, wastage, transfers and opening quantities do not post to the general ledger; only till sales and till returns move the inventory account. So the opening stock you typed into the Item Master is on the till's count but not in the ledger's inventory figure. Ask your accountant to bring the opening stock value into the books with a journal, and to reconcile the inventory account to a count at month-end.
Selling into negative stock
A till sale refuses to take stock into negative quantities unless the business allows negative stock. Each choice has a cost.
- Refuse negative stock and your counts stay honest, but a sale is blocked whenever the till thinks a product has run out, even if a delivery is sitting on the shelf.
- Allow negative stock and the desk never turns a member away, but the counts drift until someone counts the shelf.
The choice matters more because deliveries do not top up stock by themselves. Goods received against a purchase order do not add stock. With the Warehousing add-on, a business keeps stock locations on the server, and a stock count sets a location's quantity to what was counted and records the difference as an adjustment. That count is how the till's figures are brought back in line after deliveries.
A worked example in words: a gym refuses negative stock. A delivery of energy drinks arrives on Monday and goes straight into the fridge. On Tuesday, a member tries to buy one and the till refuses, because as far as the till knows the drinks ran out last week. The manager counts the fridge, records the count against reception's location, and the next sale goes through. From then on, the manager counts the fridge every time a delivery arrives.
Low-stock flags use a fixed default
A product's reorder level cannot be changed by any screen, so low-stock flags use a fixed default. For a slow-moving flavour that is fine. For your best-selling drink, the flag may come far too late, or far too early.
Keep your own short reorder list for fast movers, with the quantity at which you reorder each one, and check it against the counts each week. The flags remain a useful prompt for everything else.
A weekly routine for the front-desk shop
- Count the fridge and shelves after every delivery, and record the count where the Warehousing add-on is in place.
- Check your reorder list against the counts.
- Look for products past their best-before date and set them aside.
- At month-end, give your accountant the count so the inventory account can be reconciled.
When products expire, counting and writing off expired supplements takes it from there. Supplier price rises are a separate problem, covered in when supplier prices change on your products. ACCA's article on inventory control explains techniques such as economic order quantity and re-order levels, with practical points on managing stock.
A front-desk shop stays honest when the counts are regular and the products are set up right the first time. Get the Item Master right, count after every delivery, and do not let the fixed low-stock flag be your only reorder signal.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
