Conducting regular inventory counts is essential for maintaining accurate records of your physical assets. This process helps identify discrepancies such as lost or unaccounted-for items, ensuring your inventory data aligns with actual stock.
When to Complete an Inventory Count
Periodic Counts: It's common practice to perform inventory counts periodically, at least annually. Many businesses align this with the preparation of their annual financial reports.
Seasonal Timing: For businesses with seasonal peaks, conducting an inventory count at the end of the season is practical, especially when most items have been returned and are accounted for.
How to Complete an Inventory Count
Preparation:
Navigate to your Inventory in the TWICE Admin and open the Articles tab.
Export your list of articles by clicking Export in the upper right corner. This creates a CSV file which you can open in Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet application.
Here’s how to transform a CSV file to split the information into columns for easier editing.
Setting Up the Spreadsheet:
Add a new column to the spreadsheet for entering all articles found during the count.
Begin the count by scanning all article IDs into the new column, or manually enter them if you don’t use barcode scanners.
Tracking Missing Articles:
Add another column to note whether each article has been found.
Use Excel’s VLOOKUP function to compare the scanned article IDs with the Article ID column to identify missing articles.
Filter the list by the "is missing" value to identify all articles that are missing.
Updating Inventory Status:
Update the Status column to reflect whether items are LOST or IN USE, based on whether they were found or missing.
Save your changes to the spreadsheet.
Re-importing to TWICE:
Once your count is complete and the file is updated, save it as a CSV.
Navigate back to the Inventory page in the TWICE Admin.
Click on Import, select Choose file, and upload the updated CSV.
The import will update the Status column in your inventory. Confirm the import to finalize the updates.