What Are the Best Practices for Warehouse Stock Counts?

Do you constantly suffer from inaccuracies when conducting warehouse counts? Are you using the best practices when it comes to stocktaking? Please read below to learn more.

Warehouse stock counting is an important process for monitoring inventory to help ward off theft and to also ensure that you are not wasting space, or money, on stock that just will not sell.

Deadstock is something that can cause a lot of problems for any business. It ties up your capital in items that aren’t ‘working’ to generate more money for you and it takes up space that could better be used for more desirable goods.

Proactive stock counting helps you to keep track of your goods in a more efficient way.

How to Manage Your Stock Effectively

As with any other part of managing a business, you need to plan carefully, and the first and most important thing to plan is when, and how often, you will count your stock.

Plan Ahead

It’s best to choose a day when the warehouse is closed to do the stocktaking because attempting to track stock while the warehouse is in use is an error-prone process.

Stock counts should be done at least annually, although more often than that is better if you have the resources to do so.

Regular stock counts can help you to identify human errors or software issues that might otherwise lead to disappointed customers.

Use the Right Tools

While small warehouses can get away with using a pen and paper system, tools such as barcode scanners and electronic databases (that link to your online store and/or point of sale systems) can be useful for keeping track of your stock.

They can help you to automate the process, to a degree, and reduce the possibility of human error or interference.

Barcode scanners will tally stock automatically and log it into a database, reducing the possibility of fraud and removing the possibility for human error.

When you use the right tools a ‘day-long’ stock counting session can be reduced to something that takes an hour or so. This is less disruptive to your business and will make your warehouse staff happier too.

Repeat and Verify

Where possible, have more than one person do the stocktake. Divide the warehouse up into departments, and do a count for each department.

Have each individual note their stock levels for the department, then have a second person verify that count. This is a double count system.

If the double count picks up any discrepancies then you should verify the correct count immediately.

Consider Cycle Counts

For a small or medium-sized warehouse, doing stock counting on a yearly or quarterly basis is fine. For bigger warehouses, this could be overly cumbersome.

Cycle counting is a good way to stay on top of the issue of stock counts without causing massive disruption as this means you monitor counts on a smaller basis (such as per shelf/product/department) on an ongoing basis.

You will still need to do an annual stock take to confirm that everything is as it seems, however you benefit from the clarity that a rolling snapshot of your inventory provides.

Call in the Experts

If you would like to know more about the best stocktaking solutions and how the right set of software and point of sale systems could help you, give us a call.

Our team would be happy to discuss your needs and to help you build new, more efficient workflows that will support the best operation of your warehouse or store.

We have the right tools for companies of all sizes and will work to accommodate your business, supplying you with technologies that are tailored to suit your business to help improve your efficiency and accountability.

We are the market leader when it comes to the development of customised and packaged solutions.

This includes Inventory Management, Portable Barcode Readers, Supply Chain Management, Time and Attendance and Asset Tracking to name but a few.

Please call us today on 03 9578 7600 or 1800 061 642 or contact us through our website on https://www.asp.com.au/contact-us/.