Your first week, in the right order

Most of Stockovaa can be done in any order. Four things cannot, because everything after them depends on them and changing one later rewrites history.

• Your currency, because every price is stored against it.
• Your units, because the conversion is applied every time a quantity is read, including on sales you took last month.
• Your warehouses, because stock is held per warehouse and a warehouse added later starts empty.
• Your opening stock, because a sale of something the system does not know you have leaves you with a negative figure.

• General settings: business name, currency, time zone and date format.
• Currencies, then Taxes, then Units.
• Warehouses, one per place you hold stock.
• At least one biller, which is the name printed on an invoice.
• An invoice template, marked In use.

• Categories and brands. Reports and the till group by category, so it is worth a few minutes.
• Products. Add a handful by hand first to see the form, then import the rest from a spreadsheet.
• Opening stock. Tick Initial Stock on a product and it is recorded as a purchase, which is why it appears in your purchase list and in your accounts.
• Print barcodes if you use a scanner.

• Roles. Settings, then Roles and permissions. Create the roles you actually have, such as a cashier and a stock clerk, before you create the people.
• Users. People, then Add User. Give everybody their own login.
• POS settings if you sell over a counter, especially Ways to take money.
• Customers and suppliers, imported from a spreadsheet if you have one.

• Take a real sale on the till, from scan to receipt, before your first busy day.
• Record a real purchase and check the quantity moved.
• Run a stock count on one category so you know the procedure before you need it.
• Open Reports and find the summary report, so you know where the numbers live.
• Take a backup, and put the file somewhere only you can reach.