What is Stock Count?
Stock count is the process of manually checking and keeping a record of in-hand inventory at the end of the year. It affects a company’s purchases, production and sales. The stock-counting process differs from one company to another.
Significance of Stock Count in E-commerce Logistics
Businesses selling products need to maintain accurate inventory levels as a part of inventory management. Hence, the stock count is an inseparable part of an efficient business. Here are some significant benefits of stock taking:
- You can ward off heavier issues like overstocking, stockouts, and dead stocks with stock counting.
- Stock counting helps to identify stock discrepancies with accounting and financial records.
- Conducting stock counts at the end of the year gives accurate data on the inventory. Once you know how inventory control measures are performing, you can identify loopholes, make the process more efficient and increase profit margins.
Prerequisites for Stock Count and How It Works
There are two prerequisites to be followed before starting stock counting. Those are:
- Cutting off all sales and purchases
- Organizing a particular area for counting
The steps to be followed for stock counting are given below:
- Select and train the teams to conduct counts and fill out paperwork.
- Set a cutoff time after which no inventory is added or shipped out from the warehouse.
- Distribute pre-numbered count tags to teams. Log in the number ranges given to the team.
- Count and fill out the count tags.
- Next is verifying count tags to check any discrepancies before entering data into the spreadsheet.
Use Case with Stock Count
Suppose you have an automobile company, and its total value is AU$19,050,000. Now, later it was found that there were missing 18 units of spare parts valued at AU$480,000.
As you can see, there is a discrepancy in the record. This could be easily avoided with a stock count that will let you know beforehand about the 18 units you forget to evaluate.