If you manage your inventory like a hawk, then it should never become inaccurate. People will always make mistakes, so it's good practice to run a inventory check regularly to keep things in check.
1. Print Out Your Inventory List
Print out a list of your inventory levels as they currently are in the system:
- Go to Products > Inventory detail.
- Filter to the relevant warehouse (if you have more than one).
- If you're using multiple warehouse locations, you can also filter to one area of the warehouse, if you just want to check inventory of one aisle, for example.
- Enter any further filters as required, perhaps Brand or Category if you're doing a inventory take on a particular type.
- Click Filter report to view the results.
- Click Show All if your listing has multiple pages.
- Click the Export button and send the results to Excel. This will give you the report that you can edit then print. Select the in stock column (which includes all items that may be already in progress in your packing system).
If you're using multiple warehouse locations, you'll be given one row per location per item.
2. Count the Physical Inventory
We suggest hiding the "quantity in stock" column in your spreadsheet so that the warehouse team actually have to count your inventory. It's all too easy just to run down a list and tick to say it's correct without actually counting. Do this in Excel by right-clicking the column header and clicking Hide.
Give the print out to your warehouse team. They should count all the items in your warehouse, including any at the goods-out stage.
3. Compare System Figures to Physical Inventory
Once the inventory has been counted you can unhide the column and run down the list to mark any differences. This is easiest done with two people; one reading from the list and one working on the spreadsheet.
4. Correct Any Differences
Your stock take may uncover missing or extra inventory you didn't know you had, or it may just identify items that are in a different location.
Learn more about inventory corrections
Learn more about internal movements
Learn more about warehouse transfers
Do I have to stop work during a stock take?
Using the process described above, your sales and packing teams can continue creating goods-out notes and picking orders, as long as ALL items are counted in the stock take. However, you must not ship any items whilst you have a stock take in progress. The stock take relies on you recording the difference between the system's value of "in stock" and your counted value of "in stock", and if you ship anything, the system's value of "in stock" will change.
It's a good idea to do your stock take in small batches, perhaps a brand at a time, or product category. It's much easier to get it all done when there's less to do. You can run "rolling stock takes" - perhaps a category a week, so ensure that your inventory is as accurate as possible.
