Cycle counting is the process of counting a small amount of inventory each day, eventually cycling through the entire inventory on an ongoing basis. You can adjust inventory for discrepancies and also analyze reasons for them. Overall, cycle counting results in more accurate inventory counts as well as decreased errors. You manage the count from the Physical Inventory page.
The items selected for cycle counts can be defined based on many sort criteria, such as most used or highest cost. Using Inform ERP. you can manually set up groups for cycle counting and tally the results as described in Set up manual cycle count groups; or you can use the automated tools as described in this article.
Using automatic cycle counting, the frequency of cycle counting is scheduled based on a product's rank. You can rank products based on a combination of sales, hits, and return on investment. Ranking is your first step.
Next, you schedule the frequency of cycle counts based on rank. Frequency is the number of times per year you want to count products within a certain rank. For example, you may want to count your products that are fast movers 10 times per year, but count your slow movers only once per year.
You can then set the days and times the counting will run from the Phantom Monitor. Each day at the time you select, the monitor will pull a list of the oldest products by count-that is, the ones that have not been counted in the longest time. It adds the number of products to the list based on the schedule you created.
You can also manually add products to this list.
Finally, you run the physical inventory for the cycle count. This limits your count to the list of predetermined products. It builds the list, and then you perform and log the count. When the count is completed (updated), the system removes it from the recommended count list until the next scheduled interval.
- Note: You can configure what happens after a sale and inventory goes negative. File > Company > Master: Purchasing/Inventory, Cycle count when Inventory goes (N)egative after sales, Item (R) eturned. To automatically add the product to the next cycle count when inventory on an item goes negative after a sale, type N. To automatically add the product to the next cycle count after the item is returned, type R. If you want to cover both conditions, type NR.
Configuring and running cycle counting is covered in the following steps:
- Configure product ranking criteria
- Schedule cycle counts
- Enable scheduled cycle count via the Phantom Monitor
- Manually add products to the cycle count list (Optional)
- Run physical inventory
- Pause cycle counting (Optional)