Butcher shop stocktake - the cooler and freezer counting-basis checklist: five locations, tare on packaged goods, frozen weighed frozen, temperature layers logged separately

You are the stocktake-basis designer for a butcher shop. Build me a
"cooler and freezer counting-basis checklist." Understand the premise:
a butcher shop counts differently from ordinary retail - by weight,
not units, so every stocktake is a weighing operation. And the moment
the basis drifts between weeks, the numbers stop fooling even the
person who wrote them. This checklist's job is to fix "how we count"
once, then copy-execute weekly.

Block one: five locations, all counted (miss one and the whole count
is void)
1. Sales counter: including the markdown basket and every slot of
   the display cooler
2. Cooler: overnight carryover, today's cuts not yet racked,
   boxed-cut purchases
3. Freezer: frozen goods, stock-up loads, bones in frozen storage
4. Breaking bench: half-broken carcasses, ground meat not yet sold -
   weigh as-is, marked "WIP"
5. The three trim buckets: trim / fat / bones (the breaking SOP's
   three buckets are stock at count time; "scraps" still count)
(Record each location as you finish it - numbers reconstructed from
memory after close have no stocktake value)

Block two: weighing basis (every line exists so this week matches
next week)
- Packaged goods (bag/box/tray): deduct tare per the tare table; a
  package not in the table gets one empty weighed and added to the
  table on the spot
- Frozen product: weighed frozen, always - no thawing, no conversion.
  Thaw conversion is an estimate; frozen-state is a real weighing.
  The count's credibility rests on "everything is actually weighed"
- Glazed frozen goods (iced frozen bones): weighed as-is with the
  glaze - the glaze is accepted as part of the basis, provided it is
  the same every week
- One unit (pounds), one decimal place - fixed, not negotiable

Block three: recording basis
- Three temperature layers logged in separate columns: counter /
  cooler / freezer - never summed into "total stock." Cooler stock
  turns in days, freezer in weeks; the sum supports no decision
  whatsoever
- Near-date items listed separately: among labeled carryover, the
  pieces that will not sell tomorrow (feeding the end-of-day SOP's
  "carry-over failure" record)
- WIP on its own line, never mixed into finished cuts

Block four: book-to-physical reconciliation
- Physical count against theoretical stock (opening + purchases -
  sales +/- processing adjustments)
- Difference inside my tolerance line: file it, touch nothing
- Difference outside the line: no guessing at the counter - the
  whole sheet goes to the "theoretical-stock variance analysis"
  process
- The tolerance line is mine (written at the top of the checklist),
  set from my own recent weekly differences - never copied from
  anyone else's shop

Constraints:
- No invented "reasonable shrink rates" or "acceptable variance
  ranges" - only my own history can answer for my coolers and my
  scale
- No "close the shop and count everything" recommendations - this
  basis exists precisely for quick counting during operation;
  sustainability of the count beats precision of any single count
- One page: five locations + three bases + reconciliation; the whole
  run inside half an hour after close

Why it is written this way

"Five locations, all counted" leads the checklist because the most common "stocktake loss" in a butcher shop is not loss at all - it is the trim buckets and the breaking bench never counted. The half-broken carcass, the ground meat not yet sold, the three buckets of "scraps": all of it was bought at purchase price by weight, and skipping any of it plants a permanent unexplained deficit in the book-to-physical difference. The walk order, counter inward, mirrors the natural post-close route - the count finishes itself in one pass.

"Frozen weighed frozen, no thaw conversion" is the checklist's most important single decision. Thaw conversion sounds more "truthful," but it turns the count from weighing into estimating - the conversion factor is itself uncertain, and correcting a weighed number with an uncertain one makes the result less trustworthy, not more. Frozen- state includes glaze and drip, but the basis is identical every week, so the trend stays clean. A stocktake's first duty is not "truth" - it is comparability. The same lesson the eyeball-count stalls had to learn.

Temperature layers stay in separate columns because summing them is professional-looking and harmful: cooler stock turns in days, freezer stock in weeks, and the combined "total stock" guides neither ordering nor aging decisions. Kept separate, a freezer column rising three weeks straight says the stock-up strategy needs review - a signal the sum can never show. Near-date items get their own line for the same reason: they are tomorrow's markdown input, and buried inside a total they are invisible.

"No closing-down full counts" sits in the constraints to set the feasibility boundary: half a day of lost trade for one count costs more than it returns, and by month two the shop would be guessing instead - and the whole basis dies. Quick counts, copied verbatim, done in half an hour: a slightly rough basis that survives always beats a precise one that dies in two months.

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