The dreaded stocktake

The horror of all warehouse managers and financial controllers, the annual stocktake with auditors for good measure. For many business's the annual stocktake is a combination of months/weeks of planning, especially for manufacturing or GMP compliant business's. It combines planning between the financial department, manufacturing and the warehouse, even suppliers and customers are also often affected.

Ensuring an accurate and timely audit depends on many factors, ensuring WIP is accounted for (ive only rarely seen a stocktake completed with a high degree of accuracy where the manufacturing plants continued to operate and WIP was managed well), quality of information and training provided to the staff (often staff roped in to help), a clear structure of who's in charge, who's counting what.

It may also seem a simple thing, but having planned teams, definite start/break/stop times can help greatly.

Whether your doing the stocktake old school with count sheets and a master count sheet with clipboards and pencils or whether your scanning its important the stocktake controller knows what's counted and what's not (NB: if your using the old school method, ensure its a blind count - and the counters show the workings of how they got their totals - (4 ctns x 100 = 400).

Always run variance reports and allow for re-checkers in your overall staffing plan.

Need help planning your next stocktake - drop us a line at logistics consult