What is an inventory count

September 12, 2020 19:21

What is…

What is an inventory Count? What Types of Inventory Counts are Supported in GlobalTill?
Why Inventory Counts?

In Canada, retail stores have a legal requirement to do an inventory count of all products once every year. However, in practice, stores often perform inventory counts more frequently either by taking an inventory of all products in their store or by counting small subsets of products or sections of a store to maintain the accuracy of inventory records.

We recommend a complete inventory count each month to ensure accuracy. If your store does not have the resources to perform an entire count at once, you can use GlobalTill to do partial counts by category, brand, sub-vendor, or shelf location allowing you to break up your counts over days and weeks.

By performing inventory counts more frequently, managers have more control of the accuracy of their numbers and can more easily piece together the exact reasons why an inventory discrepancy occurred.

Other Benefits include:

Accurate quantities at your POS stations to advise customers (resulting in higher customer satisfaction)
Ability to use GlobalTill's automated replenishment features
Inventory valuation accuracy

Because stores often operate most days a year, closing stores to perform an inventory count is often impractical and costly. This creates additional challenges because inventory counts are often performed while a store is doing business and thus against an inventory that is constantly changing. If you must perform a count when a store is open, count the smallest section of inventory practical and ensure that it is posted immediately to avoid creating discrepancies during the counting process.

Why Might Inventory Discrepancies Occur?

Common purchasing and receiving errors including:

Supplier Invoices: If supplier invoices are not entered correctly, the inventory and cost information flowing into GlobalTill will be incorrect.
SKU Changes: Suppliers often change SKU codes on the same product, re-use UPC codes, and perform other non-standard operations with their product catalog. Occasionally suppliers will inform stores, however, many times they do not. These changes are some of the hardest to notice but easily create discrepancies.
Seasonal Items: Some suppliers use seasonal or special packaging from time to time and these products may be coded incorrectly.
Point-of-Sale: Clerical errors at the point of sale occur to sales clerks adding the wrong product to the invoice at checkout.
Theft: Both external and employee theft is an unfortunate reality for retail businesses.

Frequent counts may give you the information you need to combat this by isolating the section of your store or time that this most often occurs.

What types of counts are supported in GlobalTill?

Full Count: Is a complete inventory count of all your store's products. Any products not counted will be set to 0. This type of count is best performed when the store is closed.
Cycle Count: A cycle count is a count where you count a selection of products or a small section of a store that is not an entire category, subcategories, or area. This is an isolated, individual count that will not affect any other products that are not counted (meaning if you do not count a given product, the inventory for that product will remain the same).
Partial Count: A partial count is a count where you count a specific section of your store. Everything in that section that is not counted will be set to 0 when you post the count because GlobalTill assumes there is none of that product in the store if you did not count it. This type of count is useful because it can tell you about items that you've missed - if you select a category BEER and forget to count Budweiser, GlobalTill will alert you to that before you post your count. If you do not want to unexpectedly set the quantity for zero for your products, you should use a cycle count instead.

GlobalTill supports creating a section of products based on:

Category
Sub Category
Sub Sub Category
Shelf Location
Brand
Supplier
Sub Vendor

Frequently asked questions

Where are Inventory Counts Performed in GlobalTIll?
Select Products > Count Inventory.
Can my store stay open while I count?
While ideally your store should be closed while performing a count, we realize that this isn't practical for most stores. You can stay open while you count. However, GlobalTill expects the counts to be accurate as of the exact moment you press "Post Inventory Count."
What does this mean "while you are counting?"
Consider the following examples:
- Imagine you count 10 (ten) Budweiser 24 Pack Cans and enter the count into GlobalTill. Then, you sell 1 before the count is posted. To have an accurate count, you must adjust Budweiser 24 Pack Cans down to 9 (either by changing the count to 9 or adding a count of -1).
- If you sell a Bud Light 12 pack but haven't yet gotten around to counting that product, there is no need to adjust the count before you post it.

More Information

For more information, see the articles: