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Stock Count – Good Advice for an Accurate Stock Count

The best advice: don't mix stock counting with other tasks.​

In principle, it is possible to pick orders, and even receive goods and adjust stock, while performing a stock count, but our best advice is not to do this and to focus on your stock count instead.

There are many pitfalls in combining the two, and if you want to make it work, you need to have total control over the item allocation in your warehouse, so you can count part of your warehouse while processing orders, receiving goods, etc. in other parts of the warehouse.

We see the most problems with stock counting when people try to do several things at the same time without having full control over their processes and the division of the warehouse.

Don't look at the expected stock figure when you start your stock count​

The stock count is created in Lagersystem and can be prepared long before it is actually put to use.
The moment it is created, the expected stock figures that are valid at that exact point in time are retrieved, and these are the figures you can see on the stock count inside Lagersystem:

If you start your stock count several days later, that figure probably no longer matches, so you should be aware of that. The figure is outdated in the list, but is updated the moment the item is scanned in the stock count.

You should therefore not print out a list with figures for Expected stock and rely on it when doing your stock count, but simply go by how many items are actually on the shelf.

Be careful with items that are located on multiple locations​

Lagersystem retrieves stock figures from a backend system, keeps track of packed orders, and keeps track of your locations in the warehouse. However, there is no record of how many units of an item are located at each location.

So, for example, if you have 100 units of item no. 314, split with 40 units at a location in aisle A and 60 units at a location in aisle B, Lagersystem only knows that there are 100 units in total and that item no. 314 can be found in aisle A and aisle B. But Lagersystem does not know how many units are located at each place.

In general, our advice is to keep an item on a single location as far as possible, and only have items on multiple locations if it actually benefits your day-to-day operations.
It becomes somewhat harder to keep track of if you have the same item in several places, and it can complicate stock counts.

But if you do have the same item located on multiple locations, you must be sure to keep that in mind when doing your stock counts.

The stock count works in such a way that a list is created with the item numbers that need to be counted, and it is those item numbers that form the basis for the count.

  • If you have chosen to do a full status count, you are asking to have all item numbers that exist in Lagersystem counted at the moment you generate your stock count draft.
  • If you choose to do a stock count of aisle A, you get a list of all the item numbers that are located at locations in aisle A at the moment you generate your stock count draft.
  • If you choose to do a stock count of a list of specific item numbers, or of items from a specific supplier, you get a list of exactly those item numbers, regardless of which location they are on.

The stock count itself works like this: you load it onto your handheld scanner and are told which item numbers you need to scan. You then start scanning the items one by one. You count 40 units of item no. 314 in aisle A.

The moment you scan item no. 314 for the first time, the expected stock figure is updated to the exact current figure at that point in time.
The expected stock figure at this point is the figure that applies and does not change afterwards!
This means:

  • If you are doing a full stock count, and someone goes and picks item no. 314 from aisle B before you get there to count that item, your stock figures will not match.
  • If you only count the items in aisle A, and forget that there are also 60 units of item no. 314 over in aisle B, you will end up reducing your stock to the 40 units located in aisle A.

It is the difference at the time of scanning that is transferred to your backend system, not the total stock figure.​

The moment you scan an item with your handheld scanner, the stock figure is retrieved from your webshop or accounting system, and you get the exact current stock figure as the expected stock figure.

"Expected stock" is calculated based on the stock level in your backend system, but takes into account any open orders in the system at that time, if relevant to your backend system.

You tell your handheld scanner how many units of your item number are on the shelf. And based on that, a difference is calculated relative to the expected stock count at that exact moment.

Once you have finished your count, you transfer the differences back to your backend system as a stock regulation.