Stock or Inventory Counting

Stock counting is essential for all warehouses and uses law of the country and accounting principles. The new terms are cycle counting or perpetual inventory counts.

At the company’s year end, or at the closure of the warehouse (generally once a year), a full stock count is carried when all inbound and outbound activities are stopped. Sometimes depending on the auditor’s requirements, this may happen quarterly or half yearly.

A cycle count is an inventory auditing procedure where a small subset of inventory, in a specific location, is counted on a specified day. Cycle counting should only be performed in facilities with a high degree of inventory accuracy. The purpose of cycle counting is to verify the inventory accuracy and is not an adequate procedure to be used to correct inventory errors.

A method of accounting for inventory that records the sale or purchase of inventory in near real-time, through the use of computerized point-of-sale and enterprise asset management systems. Perpetual inventory provides a highly detailed view of changes in inventory and allows real-time reporting of the amount of inventory in stock, hence, accurately reflecting the level of goods on hand.