Away from the shop? Five things to check before you call your team

Before you call your team, check the sales, payments, stock movements, waiting orders and unfinished decisions. Those five checks turn “How is the shop?” into a useful conversation. You can ask about the work that needs attention instead of making everyone repeat the whole day.

You have stepped out for a supplier meeting. Your phone keeps buzzing. Someone needs a discount approved, a customer says a transfer went through, and a delivery is waiting for one missing item. Meanwhile, you are trying to listen to the supplier sitting across from you.

Being away should not mean being blind.

A good check-in gives you enough context to make a decision, then lets the team continue. It is not a remote interrogation. Here is a practical routine for an owner who wants fewer vague updates and a clearer picture of the day.

1. Start with the sales, not the total alone

A sales figure is an opening question. It is not the whole answer. Look at the period, branch and staff member behind it. Check unusually large discounts, returns and cancelled transactions before deciding that the day is going well or badly.

Suppose your fictional Surulere shop has recorded ₦420,000 by lunchtime. That sounds encouraging. But ₦120,000 belongs to an order awaiting payment, and one return has reduced yesterday’s sale. The team may be working well; you simply need to understand what the total includes before treating it as cash available to spend.

Ask: “Which of today’s sales still needs something from us?” This invites a practical answer. “Why have you only sold this much?” often produces a defence, even when the real issue is a delivery delay or a product that has run out.

Compare like with like. A Tuesday morning should not automatically be judged against a Saturday evening. Consider trading hours, promotions and any unusual closure. Record the explanation beside the exception so tomorrow’s review does not begin from scratch.

2. Separate money promised from money confirmed

“The customer has paid” can mean several things: a screenshot arrived, the cashier saw an alert, someone checked the bank, or the payment was matched to the correct sale. Your team needs one agreed meaning for confirmed payment.

Review unsettled sales and unusual payment entries. For bank transfers, follow your bank-verification procedure; a message or picture alone is not confirmation. If a customer paid in two parts, make sure both parts are attached to the same sale rather than disappearing into separate conversations.

Consider a ₦78,000 order. The customer sends ₦50,000 now and promises the balance on collection. The useful update is “₦50,000 confirmed, ₦28,000 outstanding, collection on hold.” It tells the owner exactly what is known and what remains open.

Ask who can clear the hold and what evidence they need. Do not let three staff members each assume that someone else checked. At the end of the day, the person reconciling payments should be able to find the sale, amount, confirmation and outstanding balance together.

3. Look at the movements behind the stock figure

Stock changes because goods arrive, sell, return, move between locations or become damaged. When a number looks wrong, inspect those events before ordering a fresh count or telling staff to change the balance.

A product can be physically present but unavailable to the next customer. It may already belong to an order being prepared. A branch transfer can also leave one team waiting for goods another team believes it has sent. Ask about status and location, not just quantity.

For example, six cartons leaving the warehouse should have a destination and someone receiving them. “Sent to the shop” is incomplete if the receiving team has not confirmed what arrived. Check the items and units, then assign the discrepancy to the people who can resolve it.

Watch for repeat adjustments. One correction may be understandable; the same item being corrected every few days suggests a receiving, sales or unit problem. Investigate the pattern instead of congratulating the team each time the numbers are made to match.

4. Find the orders that are waiting on people

Paid is not delivered. A completed sale does not tell you that goods were picked, checked, dispatched or collected. Look for orders stalled between those steps, especially when a customer has already been given a promise.

Ask for the oldest waiting order and its next action. A message such as “We are working on it” hides the bottleneck. “The blue variant is missing; Ada will confirm the replacement with the customer by 2pm” gives you something concrete to review.

Be careful with transport-park handoffs. A package reaching a park is not proof that the buyer received it. Record the handoff information and the agreed collection arrangement, then keep the customer informed about what has actually happened.

If you must intervene, remove the obstacle rather than taking over the entire order. Approve a replacement, clarify a delivery promise or name the decision-maker. The order should still have an owner after your call ends.

5. Finish with a short decision list

Your check-in is useful only if the open items move forward. Write each decision as an action with a person and a time. “Follow up payments” is too broad. “Tunde to confirm the ₦28,000 balance before collection at 4pm” is usable.

Keep the list small enough to finish. Deal first with customers waiting, unconfirmed money, stock discrepancies affecting sales and decisions blocking staff. A minor formatting error in a report should not take the same attention as goods leaving without payment confirmation.

Some issues need no owner approval. If the team can resolve a normal return within its agreed rules, let it do so. Otherwise, checking the business from your phone becomes another way of making every action depend on you.

A fifteen-minute check-in you can try tomorrow

Set a regular time that suits the trading day. Before the call, review the available records. Ask the team to bring exceptions, not a second copy of everything you can already see. Use the first few minutes for customers and money, then stock and waiting orders.

During the conversation, agree what happened, what needs to happen next and who is doing it. Close with the three most important actions. If an issue needs deeper investigation, give it its own follow-up rather than keeping the entire team on the phone.

Afterwards, check the action list at the agreed time. If the same problem keeps returning, change the routine that creates it. More frequent calls rarely fix a missing receiving check or an unclear payment rule.

Your team will also need context when you are unavailable. Agree who can approve ordinary exceptions, what needs escalation and how an urgent customer problem reaches you. That makes the check-in a support for the working day rather than another queue everyone must join.

Your owner check-in checklist

• Same period and location used for the sales review.
• Outstanding payments separated from confirmed receipts.
• Unexpected stock movements checked before balances are changed.
• Oldest waiting orders given a specific next action.
• Each decision assigned to one person and a time.
• Yesterday’s unresolved actions reviewed before new ones are added.

You’re done when every important open item has an owner and a next step. You do not need to know every detail to stay informed. You need reliable records and a team that knows what to bring to you.

To picture this routine in the product, see the IGFirstERP working-day walkthrough. For the daily stock check behind it, use the stock mismatch and reconciliation guide.