Regular stock counts as an outsourced service

An annual inventory gives you a snapshot of the warehouse on a single day. For the rest of the year, stock levels rely on the books and on trust, and shortages often surface months later, when the cause is hard to trace. Frequent counts by your own staff do not always work either: people are pulled away from their main job, and the result may not be impartial. With regular outsourced counts, an external team counts to a schedule agreed in advance, every month or every quarter, covering an agreed part of the warehouse. A difference is then found while it is still small, and while the documents and people behind it are still around.

What the service includes

• a starting point: a first full count, or acceptance of the results of your last reliable inventory;
• grouping items by value and turnover, with a check frequency for each group;
• an annual schedule: which zone and which group are counted in which month;
• scheduled cycle counts and recounts of items with differences;
• review of differences together with the warehouse manager and the accountant;
• a monthly or quarterly report and a plan for the next period;
• extra counts when needed, for example when the person responsible for the stock changes or a suspicious shortage appears.

Step by step

1. Site visit and review of stock data in 1C or Excel: number of items, zones, turnover.
2. Plan: groups, frequency, count days and responsible people. Signing of the contract and a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
3. Baseline count, or acceptance of existing results.
4. Scheduled cycle counts: each item is checked in two stages, and differences are recounted by a different counter.
5. Finding the causes of differences through receipt, issue and transfer documents.
6. Period report handed over and the next period's plan approved; once a quarter, an overall review of results.

On count days the warehouse keeps working wherever possible: the zone being checked is closed for a short time, or the count is done outside working hours.

What you receive

• an annual count calendar and the list of groups;
• for each count, count sheets and a list of differences in the form of a variance statement;
• a short monthly or quarterly report: how many items were checked, how many matched, the largest differences and their causes;
• a note on whether measures agreed in the previous period were carried out;
• quarterly and annual trends: are differences going down, and in which zone or group do they keep coming back.

All files are delivered in Excel and, if needed, prepared for import into 1C.

Unlike a one-off count, regular control lets you compare results from month to month. If the same zone shows differences several months in a row, that is no longer chance but a sign of a process error: unchecked receiving, transfers without documents or goods put away in the wrong place. In that case the report points to the stage that needs checking, and if a deeper review is needed, we suggest a warehouse audit.

How it relates to the annual inventory

Whether regular cycle counts can fully replace the annual inventory is decided with your chief accountant, based on the company's accounting policy and the requirements of Uzbekistan's accounting standard BHMS 19. In practice they make year-end work much easier: the warehouse is in order, codes and locations are correct, and large differences have been fixed during the year. Our annual inventory guide explains how to prepare for the year-end count, and an example of a monthly schedule and reporting rhythm is given in a separate article.

How the price is set

There is no single fixed price for regular counts: the amount depends on how often counts take place, how many items are checked per period, the number of sites and the working hours. Only part of the warehouse is counted in each period, so the volume per period is much smaller than in a full count. We calculate the price after seeing the site and fix it per period in the contract. The calculator on this site gives an estimate for a one-off full count, which you can use when planning the baseline count. Night or weekend work carries a surcharge.

Who it is for

Distributors and wholesale warehouses, pharmacy and store chains, raw material and finished goods warehouses in manufacturing, warehouses of online shops selling through Uzum and Telegram, and building materials yards. It is especially useful when the owner is not at the warehouse every day or the warehouse manager changes often: an independent count becomes an extra check on internal reports.