Catching stock-outs before the clinic does: a daily routine

Most stock-outs are reported by the person who needed the product: a nurse at the dispensary window, a ward sending a runner, a clinic calling the district store. By then the only options left are emergency ones. A short check at the same time every day moves that moment earlier, to when you still have time to order, borrow from another site or warn the people who depend on you. This article sets out a daily routine for a store manager or facility in-charge, what to look at in OpenBoxes, and how OpenBoxes Lift can bring the check to your inbox.

Why daily#

Stock moves every working day. A check that happens once a week can find a product days after it ran out, and a product that was merely low on Monday can be gone by Thursday. A daily look at the same few lists, at the same time, is short because the lists are short: most days there is little new on them.

The routine#

1. Start with what is at zero#

Look first at products with nothing left at a location. Each one is either already hurting someone or about to.

In OpenBoxes, the Inventory Summary indicator on the Dashboard groups products by stock status against the levels you set, including No longer in stock and Below minimum. See Dashboard.

On OpenBoxes Lift, the Reports page in the portal does the same from a daily check of your instance. Its summary counts products At zero (minimum set) and At zero (no minimum set), and its Stock-outs and below minimum card lists each product and location that is at zero or below its minimum today. See Reports.

2. Then what is about to reach zero#

A product below its minimum is the next stock-out, unless something arrives first. Sort them by how long the stock will last rather than by how far below the minimum they are: 20 units of a product you use 10 a day is more urgent than 200 units of one you use 5 a month.

The Reports page's stock-outs card shows months of stock for each row, and flags anything Under 1 month. It uses the issues and consumption of the three complete calendar months before the current one, so it can differ from other figures you calculate. Months of stock explains the calculation and how to read a low number.

3. Check what is already on the way#

Before you order, check whether an order is already open. On the Reports page, the Open purchase orders card lists each open order with its expected date, and counts how many are overdue. An overdue order for a product that is below its minimum is often the real problem to chase today.

4. Decide an action for each product#

For every product at zero or close to it, write down one of:

• Order it, or add it to the next order.
• Request it from another location that has enough.
• Chase an order that is late.
• Use a substitute, agreed with the clinicians who will use it.
• Tell the people affected, so they can plan around it.

The point is that each line on the list leaves the check with an owner and a next step, not only a note that it was seen.

5. Look at the zeros nothing is watching#

The Reports page's At zero (no minimum set) count is the list most routines miss. These are products with no minimum at that location, so no stock alert and no below-minimum list will ever mention them. Go through them: some are discontinued or seasonal and can stay as they are, and the rest need a minimum. Setting min and max levels shows how to set one from consumption.

Once a week: look for repeat offenders#

The stock-outs card also shows, for each row, how many of the days checked in the last 30 and 90 days the product was at zero. A product that keeps coming back to zero has a minimum that is too low, a lead time you have underestimated, or a supplier problem. Fix the cause once and it stops appearing in the daily check.

Let the check come to you#

A routine that depends on remembering to look is the first thing to slip in a busy week. On OpenBoxes Lift, the optional daily stock alert email does the looking for you:

• Once a day, not real time. We take one picture of your stock early each morning and send the email shortly after 7am, both in your instance's timezone. A product that runs out at noon appears in the next day's email.
• It lists what is below minimum, largest shortfall first, grouped by location. Products completely out of stock are part of that list. It also lists lots nearing expiry inside the window you choose.
• Only products with a minimum set are checked for being low. That is why step 5 matters.
• Nothing is sent when nothing is wrong. The Stock alerts panel in the portal shows when the last check ran and how many alerts it found, so an empty inbox never has to be taken on trust.
• It is opt-in. Someone on your account turns it on under Integrations, Destinations, Stock alerts, and ticks the teammates who should get it. It is included on your plan, on Shared and Dedicated instances.

If your team works in Slack or Microsoft Teams, or you want a stock-out to page whoever is on call in PagerDuty, those destinations can carry stock-outs too, from the same daily check. Below-minimum and nearing-expiry stay in the email. Email, Slack, Teams or PagerDuty compares them.

What a daily check cannot do#

The Reports page and the alerts are built from a once-a-day picture of your stock. Anything that happened in OpenBoxes after the morning check shows up the next day. For a live figure during the day, look inside OpenBoxes itself: its dashboard and the reports in its Reporting menu.

Summary#

• Check at the same time every day: what is at zero, what is below minimum, and what is already on order.
• Leave the check with an action and an owner for every product on the list.
• Review the products at zero with no minimum, and set minimums for the ones that matter.
• Once a week, look for products that keep returning to zero and fix the cause.
• On OpenBoxes Lift, the daily stock alert email and the Reports page do the looking for you, once a day.

The short video A Tour of Your Portal shows where the portal's pages live, and Integrations lists every place the alerts can go.