You are hired as a consultant by Leely Inc., a large chain of retail bookstores. Barbara Weston, Leely's controller, is concerned about heavy losses of inventory in the Miami store. The store has both receiving and customer-sales areas. Incoming shipments of books are received in the secure receiving area, and after checking them against order lists, books are carted into the customer sales area. The customer sales area has a single entrance with four cash registers a few feet away.

Leely uses an antiquated accounting system, so a lot of the paperwork and recordkeeping is done manually. The accountants are unable to say how many books may have been stolen or lost. They only have complete inventory once a year, and even then they are unable to accurately estimate shortages.

Barbara Weston has a gut feeling about the losses. She has a rough feeling for sales of some of the best-selling hardbacks, and just a quick visual inspection of the shelves tells her that she should be seeing a lot more books than are actually there.

Required

Explain how you would help Barbara Weston.