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Counting Inventory

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Counting Inventory

The cycle count frequency is determined by evaluating the customer needs, product value and order volume. InterFulfillment’s inventory control department is responsible for scheduling, consolidating and informing customers of the results from the counts. The key purpose of cycle counting is to identify items with on-hand quantity errors thus triggering investigation, root cause analysis and elimination of inventory discrepancy causes. The higher the frequency of counting, the higher the ship on time metric will be. Inventory can be counted daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. 

There are two counting mechanisms in our Warehouse Manager System that allow us to count your on-hand inventory: Inventory Audit and Cycle Count. This article reviews how these two inventory counting mechanisms function.

Inventory Audit

Inventory audit is a location-based counting mechanism that is performed with our SmartScan technology. This automated functionality allows our team to validate items by scanning locations in an assigned audit job. An administrative user can then approve, reject, or request a recount of inventory. 

Cycle Count

Cycle count is a SKU-based counting mechanism that is performed manually. This paper-based process utilizes your item setup criteria to identify which items are due for counting. 

Identify the Days Between Counts. This item setup field identifies the number of days between cycle counts and is used by the Cycle Count Report

Define the Cycle Count Type. This item setup field allows the inventory control department to choose from three categories to set various cycles and lengths.

 

  1. Generate a Cycle Count Report. This report is generated by the inventory control department and uses an item's creation date and the 'Days Between Counts' value to determine when the next count should take place.
  2. Generate a Stock Status Report. This report is available to all users and is located under Reports > Stock Status and allows you to verify inventory quantities.
  3. Adjust your inventory as needed. If the Stock Status Report shows variances in quantities, the inventory control coordinator or supervisor will adjust the inventory levels and report the discrepancy