TWENTY STUDIES. ONE FORMULA.

Money lost in shops

• NRF and University of Florida, National Retail Security Survey: shrink at 1.6% of sales, with administrative and paperwork error around a quarter of it.
• FMI, The Food Retailing Industry Speaks: grocery net profit 1.6% after tax; grocery shrink 2.1% of sales.
• NGA, Independent Grocers Financial Survey: independent net margins of 1.1 to 1.3%, shrink 2 to 3% of sales.
• ECR Retail Loss Group: European grocery loss 1.5 to 2.5% of turnover; process, pricing and admin error 21 to 35% of it.
• Deloitte, Global Retail Loss Prevention Survey: pricing and process failures cost 0.3 to 0.5% of revenue directly.
• McKinsey, pricing in grocery: a 1% pricing improvement lifts grocery operating profit around 11%.
• IHL Group: manual pricing processes show 3 to 5 times the error rates of automated ones.
• FTC price accuracy audits: 3 to 5% of items scan at the wrong price, about half against the retailer.
• IGD and ECR pass through studies: independents absorb 40 to 60% of supplier cost rises in the first weeks.

Time lost at the back office

• American Express SME Business Barometer: owners spend 11 hours a week on admin and finance.
• IOFM benchmarks: 14.6 minutes to key one invoice by hand; $15.96 per invoice at small volumes.
• Ardent Partners, State of ePayables: $12.88 to process one invoice, 8.6 day cycle.
• Levvel Research: 10 to 15 minutes per manual invoice with a 1 to 3% keying error rate.
• Sage: 120 working days a year lost to admin across small businesses.
• Intuit QuickBooks: around 5 hours a week on bookkeeping and invoicing.

The formula on our pages

Three scenarios, all per month. Errors and cost creep fixed: 0.4 to 0.6% of turnover, from Deloitte's direct cost figure plus the IGD cost creep term. Acting on the weekly report: 0.75 to 1.0%, adding the FTC mispriced pool. Full pricing programme: 1.0 to 1.5%, the conservative half of McKinsey's grocery pricing opportunity.

At €1,000,000 turnover that reads €335 to €500, €625 to €835, and €835 to €1,250 a month. All labelled estimated, because they are, until your free scan measures your own shop.