Where should I start?
Five questions. No email needed, and you see the answer either way.
Why I ask these five questions
They’re the questions I ask on a first call, in roughly that order.
The type of business tells me where to look first: in a pub, usually the cellar and the bar; in a restaurant, the kitchen; in a hotel, stock moving between outlets.
What’s worrying you decides what gets looked at first.
How long it’s been going on separates a one-off from a pattern. One bad result can be a counting or paperwork error. Months of drift usually means something in the operation has changed.
Whether you have regular stocktakes, and who does them, tells me if the numbers can be trusted yet, or whether that’s where we start.
What would help most tells me whether you need answers, an investigation, or regular checks to stay on top of it.
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It stays in your browser, and you see the same answer whether or not you choose to get in touch.