Performing a physical count #

From time to time, you should perform a physical count of your inventory to verify your on-hand quantities. Counterpoint allows you to record the results of a physical count and adjust your inventory automatically.

Follow these steps to perform a physical count:

1) Ensure all Counterpoint activities that may affect on-hand quantities for the items you are counting, including sales, returns, purchasing and receiving, transfers etc. are entered and posted PRIOR to the actual count. If you have inventory transactions dated prior to the count date, ensure they are entered and posted prior to executing the Create function. Suspend all such Counterpoint activity during the count.

NB.Ensure that if you recently add/imported items and you didn’t create the inventory record it will not show in the create for the location you are running the Physical Count. In this case you will need to Run the Create Inventory Utility for the items.

2) Go to Inventory>Reports>Inventory Status, fill out the parameters as follows selecting the location for which the physical count is to be done. If you plan to count a range of items, go to the Item tab and make your selection. Also on the Item tab, select Item Type of Inventory to ensure only Inventory type items are shown in the report.

Display the report on screen, go to the last page and note the number of items in your selection.

3) Go to Inventory>Physical count>Create, select the location to be counted and ensure that items selected matches the selection made in the Inventory Status report.

4) Click the Create button to freeze your on-hand quantities and create physical count transactions for the specified items. These transactions provide a snapshot of the current on-hand quantities. If you receive the following message, stop the process and review un-posted physical count transactions. If the transactions are not required, do a remove (Inventory>Physical count>Remove) and re-do the create process. Refer to additional notes at the end of this document on the date the physical count is created.

5) When the physical count transactions are created, a message appears to confirm that the process completed successfully and to prompt you to preview the Physical Count Worksheet. Click Yes to preview the Physical Count Worksheet, which lists the items for which you created physical count transactions. Go to the last page and ensure that the number of items in your selection matches the number of items in the Inventory Status report. If the number of items does not appear on the last page, call Wagos and request the modified version of this report.

6) You can print the worksheet after it is previewed in step 5 or you can go to Inventory>Physical Count>Worksheet and print in your desired order e.g. Item#, Description, Bin-1 etc. It is advisable not to print the frozen quantities. You should print a copy of the Physical Count Worksheet for each person who will participate in the physical count. For example, if your items are stocked in different areas of your store, you may wish to have a different individual count each area and record the results on a separate Physical Count Worksheet. After creating the physical count, you can choose to create a list of items by going to Inventory>Items, press F9 to access the Item Lookup window, customize the columns and export the report to Excel. From Excel, you can customize the desired order for the count and use the Excel worksheet to record the count quantities.

7) Count the items for which you created physical count transactions on the Physical Count Worksheet. Alternatively, you can use handheld devices to capture the count.

8) Go to Inventory>Physical count>Enter to record the count quantities.

If the item is not a gridded item, enter the first count quantity for the item in the Count qty-1 field.

If the item is a gridded item, the Physical Count – Grid window appears. Enter the count quantity for each color/size combination of the gridded item. When you are finished, click OK to close the Physical Count – Grid window

If the item appeared in more than one count sheet, you can enter each count quantity in a separate line (up to 6 lines) and the software will total all counts. Optionally, for each line, you can choose to enter who did the count and count notes.

9) Go to Inventory>Physical count>Import to import items captured with a handheld device. If you recorded the count quantities on an Excel worksheet, you can also import the count quantities from the Excel worksheet using the Import menu.

10) If you enter an item for which you did not create a physical count transaction, the following message appears to inform you that the specified item is not frozen. If the count is being entered several days after the actual count, Counterpoint would compare the count quantity entered with the system quantity when the count quantity was entered and NOT with the system quantity at the time of the count. Best to record these entries using Inventory adjustments.

11) Go to Inventory>Physical count>Edit List to review the count quantities entered. Select the appropriate options from the Parameters tab to determine the values that will appear on the Physical count edit list.

12) Select the desired location in the Physical Count Transaction tab and set Print qty field to actual count, to verify the count quantities entered.

13) Select the parameters as follows to identify uncounted items and items with non-zero variances

You can also choose to show only large quanties and/or large values by adjusting the values at the bottom right of the window. The message *uncounted* appears for each item for which count quantities have not been entered. A manager should review the uncounted items to ensure that all items were counted. This should be done prior to posting and if necessary, a recount done.

14) Go to Inventory>Physical count>Post to post the physical count.

15) Select the desired Location to be posted.

16) Enter a specific Posting Date to use for physical count transactions, or you can select the Use freeze date check box to post physical count transactions using the date on which your inventory was frozen. Refer to additional notes at the end of this document concerning the date to be used as the Posting date.

17) Use the default PHYS-COUNT as the Document # or enter your desired description.

18) Use the Item selection tab to filter the items to be posted. If required, you can get a variance value by selection.

19) Select an option from the For uncounted items list to specify how you want to handle uncounted items.

Assume quantity counted is zero sets the count quantity for each uncounted item to 0.

Assume quantity on hand is correct sets the count quantity for each uncounted item to match the frozen quantity.

Skip ignores uncounted items, leaving the corresponding physical count transactions on file so you can count those items later.

Warning

Ensure that you fully understand the meaning of the above options. The default option is Skip, however, the desired option is Assume quantity counted is zero.

20) Click the Post button to post count quantities for the items you counted.

The on-hand quantity for each item for which there was a variance between the frozen quantity and the count quantity is automatically adjusted to match the count quantity.

Uncounted items are handled according to the For uncounted items option you selected from the Physical Count Post window.

When this process is finished, a message appears to indicate whether any errors occurred during posting, as well as the number of uncounted items that were skipped.

21) After posting, go to Inventory>Physical count>Worksheet, select Frozen as the Print qty and preview the report to ensure that all items created were properly dealt with.

22) You can go to Inventory>Reports>Journals to review the physical count posting Journals.

23) When required, go to Inventory>Reports>Historical Valuation report and select the required date to print a Valuation report prior to the current date. You can preview this report and save as a PDF, Excel or other format in a user-defined directory.

Additional Notes on performing a physical count

Date physical count is created

When a physical count is created, Counterpoint takes note of the cost and the quantity on hand (not the quantity available). This means that unposted documents are not considered. See Physical Count Enhancements below to freeze quantity by quantity available.

You cannot go back in time to create the physical count. Changing the date on the computer or server will not change the results. The frozen quantity is created when the Create process is done. You can choose to create physical count prior to the count to print the Physical Count worksheet then immediately do a remove and on the date of the actual count (after all stock movement documents are posted) re-create the physical count.

Posting Date

When posting physical count transactions, you can tick the box to use the freeze date or you can choose to use another date. The freeze date is the date on which the Create physical count process was done and, when posting, this date is used to record the transactions for the physical count variances. If you enter another date, when posting, this date will be used to record the transactions for the physical count variances.

If you have no sales or other inventory activity, at the location you are counting, on the day of the count and the Create was done on that same date, you can choose to use the freeze date. Otherwise, if you have sales and/or other inventory activity after the count on the same date of the count, use the date prior to the date of the actual count. This is because the Create represents the quantity on hand at the end of the previous date to the count and this is the date that should be used to print the Historical Inventory Valuation report.

Reconciling quantities several days after the count

If the physical count was already posted and several days after you need to recount an item and want to reflect the correction in the Valuation report at the date of the physical count, do the following:

1. Ensure all transactions were posted for the item.

2. Do a physical count.

3. Compare the quantity on hand with the count.

4. Use Inventory>Adjustments and enter the variance with a transaction date of the count or previous date as appropriate (see posting date above).

5. Re-run the Historical Inventory Valuation report

Physical Count Enhancements

Freezing inventory by quantity available

By default, Counterpoint freezes inventory for the physical count by quantity on hand. However, you can now configure Counterpoint to freeze your inventory by Quantity available, allowing you to consider unposted inventory transactions in the frozen quantities and the resulting physical count transactions.

To enable this feature, select Quantity available from the During physical count freeze quantity by list box at the bottom of the Main tab of the Inventory Control window (Setup > Inventory > Control).

With this setting, when you use the Physical Count Create window (Inventory > Physical Count > Create) to create physical count transactions and freeze your inventory, Counterpoint freezes the Qty available for each item— which considers quantities on unposted tickets, orders, layaways, receivings, and transfers— instead of the Qty on-hand value. This procedure can be used if using a portable device like a laptop, that has direct access to the Counterpoint database, to freeze the quantity available as you record the actual count. For this to work all stock for an item must be in the same location.

Entering/importing Counted by and Count notes

When you enter physical count quantities, you can now identify who counted each item in the Counted by field on the Physical Count Enter window (Inventory > Physical Count > Enter). You can also enter free-form comments for each count quantity (e.g., which section of the count area the count quantity came from) in the Count notes field.

When you import physical count quantities using the Physical Count Import window (Inventory > Physical Count > Import), you can specify which fields in the import file include the Counted by and Count notes values for each count quantity, or you can enter specific value Counted by and Count notes values for the import in the corresponding Use this value instead field.

The Count user and Count notes columns also appear on the Physical Count worksheet (Inventory > Reports > Worksheet) and Physical Count Edit List (Inventory > Physical Count > Edit List).

Importing units with physical count quantities

You can now include a Unit of measure field in physical count import files, allowing you to import an alternate unit (e.g., BOX or CASE) for each count quantity instead of a unit-specific barcode.

When you import physical count quantities using the Physical Count Import window (Inventory > Physical Count > Import), specify the field number that includes the Unit of measure value for each item.

For each line in the import file, if the Unit of measure value matches one of the corresponding item’s defined alternate units, the count quantity for that item will be attributed to the alternate unit when you perform the import. If the Unit of measure value for an item does not match one of the item’s defined alternate units exactly, Counterpoint will treat that line in the import file as an error.

Saving physical count import parameters

You can now save physical count import parameters for future use, just like report parameters, preventing you from having to redefine the necessary parameters each time you import physical count quantities.

The Physical Count Import window (Inventory > Physical Count > Import) now includes the Save Parameters and Load Parameters buttons, which allow you to save and load sets of physical count import parameters.

Once you have defined a set of physical count import parameters, click the Save Parameters button to display the Save dialog, enter a Name and optional Comment for the saved parameter set, and then click the Save button to save the import parameters for future use.

To load a set of saved physical count import parameters, click the Load Parameters button to display the Load dialog, select the parameter set you want to use, and then click Load.

Select a saved parameter set and click the Preview parameters button to preview the selected parameter set. Click the button again to close the preview.