Planogram compliance audit: how to score your shelves

An approved planogram says where each product goes and how many facings it gets. The shelf a week later says what happened. An audit measures the gap between the two, so you know whether a weak week came from the plan or from the shelf. This guide covers what to check, how to score it, and when software beats a clipboard.

Why planogram compliance matters

A layout is approved for reasons: facings sized to expected sales, related products side by side, best sellers where customers look first. When the shelf drifts, those decisions stop working, and you cannot tell whether the plan was wrong or never set up. If you judge a layout by its sales when the store never built it, you learn the wrong lesson. For the display principles a plan rests on, see Shopify's guide to visual merchandising.

What the audit checks

A shelf audit on one fixture looks at five things, placement by placement:

• Right product. The item on the shelf is the one on the plan, in the same size and variant.
• Right position. It sits on the planned shelf, in the planned order from the left edge.
• Facings. The number of packs facing the customer matches the plan.
• Shelf labels. A label is present under the right product and shows the current price.
• Gaps. An empty space is recorded as a stock problem or a setup problem, never both.

Out of stock vs non compliance

An empty space is an out-of-stock when the label is right and the space is still held for the product. It is non-compliance when another product has moved in, the label is wrong, or the facings were changed. Keep the two apart. One is a replenishment problem; the other is a setup problem. Mixing them hides both causes.

How to check planogram compliance

1. Open or print the approved version of the plan, not a draft.
2. Walk the fixture from the top shelf down and left to right, the order the plan reads in.
3. For each placement, mark one result: compliant, wrong product, wrong position, wrong facings, missing or wrong label, or out of stock.
4. Photograph each shelf from the front. Compliance photos settle disagreements and show the store what right looks like.
5. Total the results and work out the rate below.
6. Write one action for each failed placement, with an owner and a date.

Planogram compliance rate

Divide compliant placements by the placements you could judge, then multiply by 100. Leave out-of-stock placements out of the denominator and report them separately; an empty but correctly labeled space says nothing about setup.

This worked example is fictional. A snack fixture has 40 placements on the approved plan.

Judged placements are 40 minus 4, or 36. Compliant placements are 30. The rate is 30 divided by 36, which rounds to 83 percent. The out-of-stock figure is 4 of 40, or 10 percent. Track both over time rather than chasing a target.

Planogram compliance checklist

• The approved version number and date are written on the audit sheet.
• Every placement has one result, with no blanks, and facings were counted rather than estimated.
• Photos exist for every shelf, taken from the front.
• Overstock on top of the fixture is stable. OSHA's rule on handling and storing materials, 29 CFR 1910.176, requires tiered stock in storage areas to be stacked and limited in height so it cannot slide or collapse.
• Each failed placement has an action, an owner and a due date.

Run it during a store walk

Pick two or three priority fixtures for each store walk and audit those while you cover the floor, rotating so every fixture is scored over a month. The free store visit checklist has room for a fixture check in its standards section, with an owner field beside each task. It works without an account, keeps the draft only in the open tab, and is not connected to any store system.

Planogram compliance report

Keep it to one page per fixture: store, fixture, approved version, date, auditor, the two figures, the photos and the action list. A store that scores low on every fixture has a training or time problem. A fixture that scores low in every store has a plan problem, and the plan is what should change.

How headoffis handles this

Approval locks a version. When a manager approves a planogram, headoffis saves a snapshot of the fixture, every product's measurements and every placement, so later catalog edits do not change what the store was told to build. A layout cannot be approved until its layout checks are clear. Read how to build a planogram and how approval works.

Every approved planogram then appears in Tasks as a checklist that follows the shelf from the top down and left to right. Staff tick each placement as its facings go up, review the approved version and saved status, and choose Save checklist change; unticking and confirming reopens it. If the plan or completion record has changed, Review latest checklist shows the current state. A manager reviewing the latest checklist sees which placements the store has marked complete, against which approved version, and can download it as CSV or print it. Read set up a shelf from its checklist.

The tick is a person's statement that the placement is set. headoffis does not take photos, recognize images or verify the shelf by camera. Findings that need fixing become Work items with assignees, a location, a due date and a status; see how to assign work.

Planogram compliance software vs a clipboard

A clipboard and a phone camera are enough for one store with a handful of fixtures. Dedicated software earns its place when several stores set up the same plan, when versions change and you need to know which one each store built, and when you want a tick history rather than a photo folder. Camera-based shelf monitoring is a further category some larger chains use, with fixed cameras or scanning devices comparing images against the plan. For a small chain, a planned walk and a phone cover most of the need.

To redraw a single fixture before a reset, the free planogram builder lets you set shelf and product widths and facings, see the free space on each shelf, and print or download the result. It works without an account, keeps the draft only in the browser tab, and is not connected to the app. For the reset itself, read how to run a shelf reset without closing the aisle.

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