Breakfast shop inventory count specialist - the after-closing daily count checklist: fillings counted daily, work-in-prep converted, fryer oil status, dry goods weekly, finish the count and submit the sheet

Please build an after-closing daily count checklist for a breakfast
shop, for a newly hired count specialist to follow. The counting
scope follows our shop's reality; your job is to nail down the
criteria: for each zone - what gets counted, how, recorded where,
and which discrepancies get escalated.

The checklist runs in closing order (start 7:30 p.m., target 25
minutes end to end):

1. Fillings zone (daily, count first)
- Vegetable and meat fillings weighed separately, never merged
- Criteria: leftover filling splits by "keeps overnight or not" -
   what cannot keep is handled per shop rule and booked into
  today's loss; what keeps rolls into tomorrow's usage and is
  tagged "overnight" on the sheet
- Record to: daily count sheet, "fillings" line

2. Work-in-prep zone (daily, record after conversion)
- Proofed / resting dough: count tubs, convert back to flour jin
  at "each tub = [x] jin flour + [y] jin water" - write the
  conversion, not just the tub count
- Soaking beans: weigh wet beans in jin, convert back to dry beans
  by the soak ratio
- Uncooked bun and youtiao blanks: count pieces, convert back to
  flour and filling by recipe
- Ground-but-unboiled soy milk: count buckets, convert back to
  dry beans
- Record to: daily count sheet, "work-in-prep converted to raw
  materials" line - this figure is deducted from the matching
  raw-material book balance; it is not additional stock

3. Fryer oil (daily)
- After straining debris, log oil status: keep using / changed
  today, per the shop's own "change every N days" rule
- Record to: equipment card, "fryer oil" field

4. Dry goods zone (fully weighed weekly, eyeballed daily)
- Flour, rice flour, sugar, packaging supplies: daily, only note
  items "below half a bag / half a case" as a purchasing reminder;
  one fixed weekday [day] for a full weigh-in
- Record to: daily eyeball notes go to the purchasing reminder,
  not the count sheet; full weigh-in goes to the weekly sheet

5. Refrigerated / frozen (daily, count pieces)
- Frozen meat, eggs, dairy: count pieces with production dates;
  near-expiry items get their own line
- Record to: daily count sheet, "refrigerated / frozen" line

Submission criteria (mandatory after counting):
- Any line where book-to-physical difference exceeds [X]% of the
  item's daily usage gets one immediate re-weigh; if it is still
  off, escalate to the store manager - never true it up yourself
- Every line must carry a number or an explicit "none" - no blank
  lines; a blank line is indistinguishable from an uncounted one

Constraints:
- This checklist is for execution: every line is an action; no
  counting philosophy, no inventory theory
- Conversion rates stay as [ ] variables for our shop's recipes;
  do not supply generic conversion numbers
- Do not hide "estimated" inside a number: any eyeballed line is
  tagged "est." and re-weighed the next day

Why it is written this way

The hard part of counting was never the counting - it is criteria drift. The same tub of overnight dough, recorded as "3 tubs" by one person and "15 jin of flour" by the next, is correct on paper twice and incomparable forever after; a large share of so-called book-to-physical difference is criteria difference, not real difference. Nailing down per zone what gets weighed, in what unit, recorded on which sheet, and what counts as "overnight" is what makes sheets comparable across people - which is the only way loss trends mean anything. The order matters too: fillings get counted first because they decide what tomorrow's opening can still produce; counted last, the window to act on them is gone.

The work-in-prep zone stands as its own section with mandatory conversions because that is what separates this checklist from a generic one. Proofed dough, soaking beans, blanks, and raw soy milk are ingredients mid-flight, and also the largest hiding place for loss: unrecorded overnight-filling waste and forgotten soaking beans all leak out through this section. Forcing the conversion to be written rather than allowing "3 tubs" is succession insurance - a tub count only makes sense to the person who wrote it; a conversion on the sheet can be verified by anyone at any time. The output line stating "deducted from the raw-material book balance, not additional stock" kills double-counting at the criteria layer, before it can happen.

The daily-eyeball / weekly-weigh split in the dry goods zone is a sustainability compromise: ask a count specialist to fully weigh every flour sack every day and the daily count never finishes, and the checklist gets abandoned whole. Watching only "below half a bag" daily as a purchasing trigger, with one fixed full-weigh day per week, is a frequency a small shop can actually keep.

The last two submission rules come from scar tissue. "No blank lines": after the fact, a blank cannot be distinguished from "none," and the two meanings order opposite quantities. "Never true it up yourself": smoothing the difference on the spot destroys the real signal (recipe drift, stock walking) inside the counting step itself - one re-weigh, and if still off, escalate, so the discrepancy surfaces somewhere it can be questioned.

Variables