Taking inventory

[Adamscottsmith]

Something that I would really love to see built into to inventory management is the ability to take inventories, both cycle counts and full counts. Where you scan each and every item, not just go through and count and update based on the count .

this is something that is a common need in the retail industry.

[PartyManiaMD]

I believe Cycle Counting is a current feature for Square for Retail, you can find it here.

Personally I just count the shelf, using paper, then manually adjust any discrepancies. I find it much easier than scanning each item over and over.

Just curious how often do you do a full inventory? I was arguing with an accountant friend and he said I should do a full inventory quarterly and I pointed out that I'm at 30k+ individual sku's with multiple of each... It's taken me 8 months to partially do an inventory because of how much product we have.

I much prefer spot checking as we don't have much shrinkage and it's easier to see an empty space than it is to count the filled spaces.

[Adamscottsmith]

@PartyManiaMD Some of that is for the POS but I’ll have to check out the cycle counts feature this coming week. I never saw that article in all of my searching. Thank you! 

[PartyManiaMD]

@Adamscottsmith No Problem. I primarily use Square for Retail on a Square Register and that has some item counting functionality, however 99% of my time is spent on my laptop in the item library. The fastest method I've found is to hand my employees a clipboard, tell them to do a count, then I update it LOL.

[Adamscottsmith]

Yeah we have over 5,000 active skus so hand counting like that isn’t really an option for us lol. Especially with the amount of backstock we have. 

[TCSlaguna]

Hey @Adamscottsmith  @PartyManiaMD 

Tips and stories of counting inventory here. 

[MayaP]

Thanks for hopping in there and providing that information @PartyManiaMD. If this is not what you are looking for @Adamscottsmith let us know! 

[yunhaishop]

@PartyManiaMD I'm also doing a paper count and keying it in after, but I'm having trouble dealing with backdating the cycle count. How do you deal with this? For example, I cycle count on 10/31 for the end of the month, but it's only keyed into the computer on 11/5. By that point, I've already had 5 days worth of sales. I can't seem to backdate my cycle count to 10/31. How do you do work around this? 

[Adamscottsmith]

@yunhaishop @You should really do this all in one day/shift. You can’t backdate to my knowledge. The best way is to scan every item after zeroing out your inventory then doing a receive count and scan every item. It updates your count in real time then. 

[mbsjourney11]

Hello, I red in previous posts to zero out all the inventory, then in the app for Square for Retail use the feature inventory>stock overview> adjust stock> receive and scan my inventory either with a scanner or built in camera. 

I am not sure if this is correct or if this will affect my reports when I zero out all my inventory, or affect my sales reports, cogs, projected profit or if I would be loosing any important information. In order to zero out the inventory I have to export to excel and adjust to "0" where it says "New quantities" then import back to Square. I am not sure if I have to use the Modify or replace option when importing the new file ... but I remember it was important not to use "count" but "receive" in the square for retail app while doing the physical inventory count.

this is my first time doing this using square. Does all of this sound right to you guys? thank you!!

Happy new year!!