Cycle counting
Counting the store zone by zone, all year, without ever closing it: the method, how to classify items, how often to count, and how to get started in four weeks.
What an annual stocktake alone does not give you
A picture, not a measure
A full stocktake tells you where you stand on the evening of the count. It says nothing about the eleven months before, nor about what drifted in between.
The legal obligation stays annual: cycle counting adds to it, it does not replace it.A variance with no cause
Twelve months on, nobody can tie a missing item back to a delivery or a period.
An evening for everyone
A full count mobilises the whole team at once, usually after closing.
Eleven months blind
Between two stocktakes, ordering and restocking run on stock nobody has checked.
Classifying items: A, B, C
You do not count everything at the same frequency. That is the whole craft of cycle counting.
A — what makes the money
A small share of your items, most of the value sold. High turnover, high value, or both. Count monthly, or quarterly at the very least.
B — the belly of the store
Medium turnover, medium value. Two or three counts a year are enough to keep the variance under control.
C — the long tail
Many items, little value and little movement. Once a year, usually alongside the full stocktake.
How to classify yours
Pull the last twelve months of sales from your software, sort by value sold descending, and cut where the curve flattens. Add anything prone to theft to A, even if its value is low.
Splitting the store into zones
Four rules, and every one of them is checked on the floor, not on a plan.
A zone is counted in one go
If one person cannot finish it in their session, cut it down. A zone left half done is a zone that will have to be started again.
Boundaries you can see
An aisle, a gangway, a bay in the stockroom. A boundary that has to be interpreted produces duplicates and omissions.
The same split on every pass
This is what makes variances comparable month on month, and lets you see a zone drifting.
The stockroom counts too
It often concentrates the variances, and it is where the network drops. The count has to hold without a signal.
Getting to cycle counting in four weeks
One week per step, and the fourth gives you the pace your store can actually hold.
Import and classify
Load the item list and the book stock, then pull the year’s sales to set up the A, B and C families.
Cut and name
Draw the zones on the store plan, print their tags, and stick them where the counter will see them.
Count one zone
Just one, on an A family, with one person. The point is not the figure: it is to measure how long a zone really takes.
Set the pace
The time you measured gives the number of zones per week. Put it in the calendar and hold to it: regularity is what produces the result.
The questions we get asked
What is cycle counting?
Counting by zones, spread over time: a few aisles this week, the stockroom next week. Each zone is checked several times a year without ever closing the store.
Does it replace the annual stocktake?
It does not replace the legal obligation to check your stock by stocktake at least once every twelve months. But a store that cycle counts all year reaches its full stocktake with stock that is already reliable, so with far fewer variances to deal with.
How often should each zone be counted?
It depends what is in it: high-turnover or theft-prone families monthly or quarterly, the middle of the range two or three times a year, the long tail once a year. These are starting points, to be reset against your own sales.
How long does a zone take?
It depends on how dense the aisle is and how many items it holds. That is why you start by counting just one, stopwatch in hand: the time you measure gives the number of zones you can hold per week.
Do we have to close the store?
No, and that is the main point. A zone is counted during quiet hours, while the rest of the store works as usual.
How do you avoid counting the same thing twice?
With zones that have visible boundaries, opened and then closed one at a time. In Quantinvo each zone carries a tag that the counter scans before starting: that is what says who is counting what, and what is left to do.
Cycle count with Quantinvo
Zones, one tag per zone, and a report on every pass.