Cycle count
What is a cycle count?
A cycle count counts part of the warehouse on a continuing schedule (today this aisle, tomorrow that class) so that every location is counted within the year without closing the building. Where auditors accept it, it replaces the annual physical inventory shutdown with a steady habit, and it works because a variance is investigated while the transactions around it are still recent.
How the schedule is chosen
- ABC by value or velocity: fast and expensive locations counted often, slow ones rarely.
- By event: count after a shipment that lost something, after an overage, after a customer complaint.
- By risk: locations near a recurring problem (shared SKUs, high-theft items, cold storage) counted more.
- Blanket counts of a zone when a pattern appears, to find out whether the problem is one SKU or one shelf.
The variance is the product
Counting only produces a number; the value comes from what happens next. Recount to rule out the counter, trace the movements since the last known good count, and record the cause when you find it (mis-pick, mis-scan, unrecorded damage). A count system that adjusts the inventory silently to match the count hides the cause and guarantees the variance returns.