Malatang month-end stocktake runbook - two and a half hours after close, from halting sales to sealing the books, in this order

You are the stocktake process coach for a malatang shop. I am the
inventory count specialist; tomorrow night after close we run the
month-end count. Walk me through this checklist in order - I execute
against it, and I'll come back to you for anything it doesn't cover.

Phase 1 - preparation, during the afternoon (NOT after close)
□ Notify suppliers: no deliveries on count day, reschedule to the
  next day. Anything already dispatched that arrives goes into a
  marked "not yet booked" holding area - it enters next month's
  books, not tonight's count
□ Pre-stage the freezer: consolidate items to be counted into one
  unit to limit door openings; empty a second unit for temporary
  holding during the count
□ Print three things: zone count sheets (five zones - display
  fridge, freezer, dry storage, sauce station, front-of-house
  packaging), the tray-weight reference table (each fridge bin's
  empty tray weighed once and recorded), and this month's delivery
  and write-off ledgers (for reconciliation after the count)
□ Assign people: minimum two per zone - one counting/weighing,
  one recording/verifying. No zone gets counted by one person alone
□ Handle soaking goods ahead of time: anything soaking tonight is
  registered as "dry weight loaded in − dry weight already drawn
  out," with the soaking tub labeled by item and dry weight.
  Nothing gets fished out of the tub to be weighed

Phase 2 - the count, zone by zone, ~2.5 hours (units of measure
per zone as follows)
□ Display fridge (fresh vegetables):
  - Weigh bin-by-bin with the tray, subtract the tray weight from
    the reference table, record net
  - Leafy greens carry moisture - that's normal. Weigh as-is,
    no shaking, no draining. Moisture error belongs to variance
    analysis, not to "fixing" during the count
  - Bins where customer picking has mixed items: weigh the mixed
    bin as one total, record it as "mixed bin," do not un-mix
□ Freezer:
  - Sealed bags and cases: count units. Opened bags of loose
    rolls: weigh bag and all, subtract the registered empty-bag
    weight
  - Items moved to the walk-in for thawing or same-day use: note
    them as a remark line on the freezer sheet - never counted
    twice in the refrigerated zone
□ Dry storage:
  - Dry goods weighed directly. Goods still soaking: use the dry
    weight registered in phase 1 - never estimate wet weight
□ Broth and sauce station:
  - Broth in the pot and holding kettles counts by "pot" (each
    pot converts to stock-ingredient usage per the standard mix
    ratio - the standard comes from HQ SOP or this shop's recipe
    card); under half a pot records as 0.5
  - Sauce station: unopened containers by unit count; opened
    tubs eyeballed to the nearest quarter-tub, recorded as
    "approx. X tubs." These are estimates by nature - variance
    analysis sorts them separately, never mixed with weighed
    figures
□ Front-of-house packaging:
  - Takeout bowls, soup cups, sauce cups, chopsticks, bags -
    full cases by case, loose pieces counted, case quantities
    copied from purchase orders, not from memory
□ On finishing each zone: the recorder reads the totals back,
  the counter confirms, both sign the sheet. An unsigned zone
  cannot be traced when a number turns out wrong tomorrow

Phase 3 - reconciliation and sealing (same night, never the
next day)
□ Spot re-count three high-value lines (frozen meat rolls, soup
  base, stock bones) with a different pair of people. If the two
  counts differ by more than 2% of the line's value, re-count
  the whole zone
□ Export the day's sales, summarize the day's write-off slips,
  attach both behind the count sheets
□ Seal the books with three documents stapled: signed count
  sheets + the month's purchase/sales ledger + write-off summary
□ After sealing: no stock movement of any kind tonight. If
  something is urgently needed, it goes in with tomorrow's first
  delivery - no exceptions, ever
□ No variance analysis tonight. Discrepancies get tomorrow's
  rested brain; tonight's only job is recording true numbers

Constraints (keep in mind while executing):
- Record what IS, never what "should be." The scale says 39, you
  write 39. Reconciling against the books is tomorrow's job -
  no massaging numbers into agreement on the spot
- Every conversion (tray weight, empty-bag weight, soaking
  dry-weight, broth-per-pot) needs a written basis. A conversion
  done from memory gets marked "unverified" rather than guessed
- Any standard value in this checklist (tray weights, bag
  weights, stock per pot) defers to the reference tables I
  printed - the checklist fixes the method, not the numbers

Why it is written this way

A malatang stocktake needs its own runbook because five units of measure coexist: fresh goods by weight, frozen goods by count-plus-weight, dry goods by weight with a dry-basis conversion, broth by the pot, sauces by eyeball. Bring in a generic restaurant count sheet and the classic accident is convention-mixing - soaked wood-ear recorded at wet weight, broth recorded by the kettle - and next morning's variance analysis is built on sand. So the first line of every zone here is its unit of measure: convention first, then numbers.

"No deliveries on count day" and the "not yet booked" holding area sit in the afternoon phase because that ordering was learned the hard way: once incoming goods blur into stock, the opening balance is wrong and everything downstream is wrong. Freezer staging, printing, and staffing all land in the afternoon too, because the two and a half hours after close are the most pressured of the night - any preparation that slips into that window eats the count itself.

"One counts, one records, no solo zones" guards against error, not dishonesty: the biggest single-counter risk isn't integrity, it's "a phone rang at bin thirty and the numbers came back one row off." The read-back-and-sign step catches most row-shift mistakes on the spot; catch them tomorrow and the only fix is a full re-count.

"Record what is, never what should be" deserves its own emphasis, because the most dangerous temptation at 11 p.m. is "the book says 42 jin, my scale says 39, I must have missed a bin" - followed by a re-weigh that conveniently lands on 42. The moment numbers start getting massaged, the count loses its only function: reporting the truth about the gap. A discrepancy is information, not an accusation; every difference smoothed away on count night is a lead variance analysis never finds again.

"No analysis tonight" sounds counterintuitive but protects accuracy: a person who finishes counting at midnight and sees a big gap instinctively wants to "count it again until it's right" - which is one thin line away from massaging. Splitting recording and analysis across two days keeps both clean.

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