Cycle counting

Cycle counting is the practice of checking a small part of your stock at a time, continuously through the year, instead of counting everything in one annual exercise. The goal is not the count itself but the accuracy it maintains: a warehouse that counts a few locations every week knows its figures are right, and never has to close for a day to find out.

Why it beats an annual stocktake

A full stocktake tells you how wrong you were once a year, usually after the errors have already cost you. It also requires stopping work, because counting while goods move produces a figure that is out of date before it is finished. Cycle counting inverts both problems. Errors surface within days rather than months, which means the cause is still findable and the same mistake is not repeated for another eleven months. And because you count a handful of locations at a time, the warehouse keeps running while you do it.

How a count works

1. Pick the locations to count. A short list is better than a long one, because a count that gets abandoned halfway is worse than no count.
2. Go to the location and count what is physically there, before looking at what the system says. Checking the expected figure first is the fastest way to count what you expect rather than what is present.
3. Confirm or correct in the app. Press Count on the main screen, then confirm with "Amount was right" when the figures match, or choose "Change amount" and enter what you actually found.
4. Look at the differences, not just the corrections. A booked correction fixes the number; understanding why it was wrong is what stops it recurring.

How often to count what

Counting everything equally often wastes effort on stock that never moves. Count by movement instead: the products that leave the warehouse most often are the ones where errors appear fastest and hurt most, so they deserve a check every few weeks. Slow movers can go months. High-value items are worth counting on value rather than movement. The analytics in Inventory Management show which products move most, which is the input you need to decide where the counting effort goes.

What the differences are telling you

A difference is information, not just a correction to book. A location that is consistently short usually means goods leave without being registered, which points at a process gap rather than at theft. A location that is consistently over means receipts are booked that never physically arrived, or that returns come back without a registration. Two products that are wrong in opposite directions by the same amount are almost always a mix-up between similar Product IDs. The transaction history is where you check these, since it shows who booked what, when and where.

Counting in Inventory Management

Counting is part of the Premium plan. Press the Count button on the main screen and the app presents products and locations to check. Each correction is booked immediately and lands in the transaction history alongside the inbound, outbound and relocation movements, so a corrected figure is never a mystery afterwards. Because the correction is registered on the spot, on the device in your hand, the counted figure is live for everyone else the moment you confirm it.

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