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Statusoptælling – Good advice for a correct status count

The best advice: Don't mix status counting with other tasks.​

In principle, it is possible to pick orders, and even receive goods and make stock adjustments, while you're doing a status count, but our best advice is not to, and to concentrate on your status count instead.

There are many pitfalls in mixing the two, and for it to succeed, you need to have complete control over the division of goods in your warehouse, so that you can status count part of your warehouse while processing orders, receiving goods, etc. in other parts of the warehouse.

We see the most problems with status counting when you try to do several things at the same time, without having complete control over your processes and the division of your warehouse.

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

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

If you don't start your status count until several days later, that figure probably no longer matches, so you should be aware of that. The figure in the list is outdated, but it is updated the moment the item is scanned in the status count.

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

Be careful with items that are on multiple locations if you don't run with full location tracking​

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

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

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

But if you do have the same item stored on multiple locations, you must remember this when doing your status counts.

Mainly applies if you don't use Full location tracking

Lagersystem fully supports having a specific quantity of an item on each individual location - having an item in several places is not a problem in itself.

How status counting behaves depends on whether you run with Full location tracking turned on:

  • With Full location tracking turned on, Lagersystem knows exactly how many units of the item are on each location. Quantities on multiple locations are handled correctly automatically, even during a status count, and the warnings below are not relevant for you.
  • Without Full location tracking, Lagersystem only knows the total stock figure and which locations the item can be found on - not the distribution between them. In this situation, you need to be extra careful, as described below.

Status counting works in such a way that a list is created with the item numbers that are to be counted, and it's these 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 counted that exist in Lagersystem at the moment you create your status count draft.
  • If you choose to do a status count of rack A, you get a list of all the item numbers that are on locations in rack A at the moment you create your status count draft.
  • If you choose to do a status count of a list of specific item numbers, or of items from a specific supplier, then you get a list with exactly those item numbers, regardless of which location they are on.

The status count itself works in such a way that you load it onto your handheld terminal and are told which item numbers you need to scan. You now start scanning the items one by one. You count 40 units of item no. 314 in rack A.

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

  • If you're in the middle of a full status count, and someone goes and picks item no. 314 in rack B before you get there to count the item, then your stock figures won't match.
  • If you only need to count the items in rack A, and forget that there's also 60 units of item no. 314 over in rack B, you'll adjust your stock down to the 40 units that are in rack 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 terminal, the stock figure is retrieved from your webshop or accounting system, and you get the exact current stock figure in the expected stock figure.

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

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

When you're done with your status count, you transfer the differences back to your backend system as a stock adjustment.

Screenshots​

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