You wil need a cash and inventory management system. Your business
will be receiving large amounts of cash and you will have an inventory that
doesn't come with bar codes so it isn't exactly easy to keep accurate track of
how much you have. Unfortunately, all that cash and non-bar-coded products give
employees excellent opportunities to increase their own salaries by taking some
out the back door. With some clubs there have apparently been huge problems
with what is politely called "inventory shrinkage". In some cases, the owners
were doing such a huge business that they didn't think it was worth their time
to put in better controls. If you are just starting out, however, you probably
won't have that luxury.
Part of the solution is to have specific
opening and closing routines for
the business that define how the cash and inventory is to be counted when the
business is opened and closed every day.
Another part of the solution is good accounting. You can start with
something as simple as Quickbooks, or any other cheap computer accounting
program.
No matter how good your system is, it won't work unless you pay
diligent attention to it. Even if you have managers, you should carefully check
all the records yourself on a daily basis.
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