Repairs quietly consuming stock that was never billed

The repair bench is usually treated as a service, and services are not thought of as consuming inventory. But every screen, battery and connector fitted came off the same shelf the shop sells from.

Where the gap opens

A part sold over the counter is billed and decremented. A part fitted under warranty is fitted and forgotten. The stock figure drifts, and because the drift is in small components, it is written off as miscounting.

More importantly, the repair service appears more profitable than it is, because its largest cost is being absorbed into retail shrinkage.

Costing work that is not charged for

This is the step most shops skip and the one that matters. A warranty repair has a real cost even when the customer pays nothing. Recording it does not create an expense that did not exist; it moves an expense from an unattributed pile into the activity that caused it.

Only then can anyone say whether the bench earns its space.

The practical version

A job card that requires parts to be added before it can be closed. Not a separate inventory system for the bench — the same stock, with consumption attributed to a job rather than to nothing.