For those companies whose financial year end was in December, the month of Christmas was spent performing the yearly stock-take, a necessary evil to support the annual audit and company financial statements created by the accountant.
Cycle Counting Approach
Performing the annual stock take does provide some benefits, but there is a lot of business disruption, and consumption of time and resources to realize its main single onetime benefit the financial audit. But using an alternative approach such as periodical cycle counting offers greater flexibility and continual benefits to the enterprise throughout the year for example:-
- Improved Cash flow – identify slow moving stock items and reduce the level of stock held
- Reduced operation disruption – no need to shut down the business
- Accurate Profit Margins – monitor profit margins across a range of products
- Improved customer service – increased inventory accuracy improves on time deliveries
- Identify Slow Moving Stock – formulate strategies such as selling at a discounted price
- Improve stock management – minimize obsolescence and identify if any theft problem exists
- Reduced errors – the amount of time period of an error is substantially reduced
When combining productivity tools such as barcoding and hand held scanners also speeds up the cycle counting process, reduces the human error element, and increases warehouse operator productivity.
Ready for Change?
So if you’re ready for change and want to reduce the pain of this year’s financial stock take, take a look at Produmex Scan, an easy-to-implement, barcode scanning solution which automates SAP Business One Warehouse related inventory transactions in real-time and understand how it can support your journey from annual stock-take to periodical cycle counting.
