Every shop drifts. Stock gets broken, spilled, eaten and quietly taken, and none of it goes through the till. A count is how you pull the numbers back to the truth.
Running a count
Go to Inventory then Stock counts and start a new sheet. It opens as a clipboard with one line per item. Walk the shelves and enter what you actually have. The sheet stays in progress while you work, so a count can be paused and finished later without losing anything.
Reading the differences
Each line compares what you counted against what the system expected, and differences are shown in red. Add a note where you know the reason: a broken case, a box that was never received properly, a delivery entered twice.
Read the differences before you apply them. A difference of three bottles is shrinkage. A difference of three hundred is a data entry mistake, and applying it would make your stock worse, not better.
Applying it
When the sheet looks right, apply it. Stock levels move to the counted figures in one step and the sheet is stamped as applied, keeping a record of what was found on which day.
How often
Count the fast movers and the expensive things often, monthly or weekly. Count everything else a few times a year. A full count of a thousand products every week will be skipped by the second week, and a count nobody does is worth nothing.
Starting out
A count is also the right way to put in opening quantities after you import your product list.