It’s common to have some discrepancies with items when taking inventory. We have listed some basic troubleshooting steps below, when an inventory discrepancy occurs at item level:
1. Open the Take Inventory History Report and first determine which dept(s) are having an issue
2. Then, expand the dept and identify which items are causing the discrepancy- and note the sku number(s)
3. Open the SKU History module to research
4. Search for the UPC & station
This will show all activity of the item to research and determine issue
Possible causes of issues:
- Are you missing sales for an item?
- Are you missing purchases for an item?
- Do you purchase one sku, but sell under another sku and the 2 need to be assembled/linked?
- Was the last audit count correct?
- Are the items being counted in the same way/pack size they were received in?
- Is there a trend of items that appear to be continually missing? Potential for theft.
An inventory grand total has a lot to factor-in. If you’re only looking at that number, and you’re not breaking down to areas contributing to that value then you are going to continually see a large variance from inventory count to another.
If you have an O/S problem then you need to utilize the information you have collected to find out why.
Only then will you know what needs to be fixed.