Inventory in Barnet Paper Count

INVENTORY IN BARNET

• Barnet inventory can be counted by individual SKU or whole/multiple Categories, Vendors or Locations.

• Counts are based on On Hand values before opening on the count day. Filters are available for products that have Sold or been Received (with Add Closing Count V.2) the same date before/during the count to help reconciliation.

• Apply 0 function is for uncounted items within a filtered Category, Vendor or Location so that no products get missed.

• Inventory can be uploaded from an iPad or Stock Counter or can be done by hand on paper.

• Various Reports are available to print for paper Re-Counts.

• A Comparison Shortage Report includes the products count variance the last time it was counted to help explain any current variance as a possible count error last time.

Inventory 101

Please remember that all counts are to balance with the system On Hand quantity at the default Start of Day time, BEFORE opening on the day you count. This is important to remember! If you process any sales for the sections you are counting before or during the count or receive any invoices with the products, they need to be accounted for when balancing. It is best to count in manageable sections – Categories, Locations or Vendors – so that the count can be completed the same day. Counts left to complete on future dates become confusing. 99% of the time you will have to do at least a second count if not a third re-count before finalizing. It is important to remember that the goal is to get an accurate count of what you have, the goal is not to just match up with system quantity. There will most likely be some variance due to things like previous count errors, clerk errors at the till, theft, unadjusted breakage, unnoticed/adjusted shipping errors, etc. Inventory is the time to notice these errors and either correct the On Hand by posting a variance or by making a receiving adjustment instead and posting the product as correct.

In POS Manager, you may have Speed Buttons set up to “Add” and “Edit” inventory, but the full menu is available at the top of the screen.

There are THREE steps for inventory:

1. Count Products

2. Add Closing Count

3. Edit Closing Count

There are THREE options:

1. Paper Count

2. iPad Count

3. Stock Counter HT730

For PAPER COUNT (Option 1/3):

There are two options for paper counts:

1. The first option generates a detailed form with multiple columns including Storeroom, Display and Shelf for recording your count totals that you will add together. Closing Form: Inventory>Closing Count>Closing Form – choose your Categories, Vendors or Locations. You can add or remove columns by selecting “Fields” and on the top right you can check any boxes that make sense for you. You can choose to show On Hand or not. Sort this in a way that makes sense i.e., alphabetically by description or by Location then description so that they print in the same order you will later enter them into POS Manager. Print this off to count. Once counted, proceed to the next step.

2. Or you could simply go straight to posting a count and then use a variance sheet to walk around the store counting with Inventory>Closing Count>Add Closing Count (or Add Closing Count V.2), choose your Category, Location or Vendor, Apply 0 or Apply Current On Hand for the whole thing and Post the Count. Then filter by Show Only/Short Over Items and then sort that list to print and count only the products with variance which will be everything that is not supposed to be 0. Once counted proceed to ‘Edit Closing Count.’

Add Closing Count

• There are 2 choices for ADD Closing Count:

Inventory>Closing Counts>Add Closing Count or Add Closing Count V.2

“Add Closing Count” is the standard and works very well. It just has fewer details once loaded. While it limits the details, you can see and adjust before you post it. Also, as it has fewer details, there is less room for user error and can be less confusing for more inexperienced users. Both options end up the same after you Post your count. This training guide will focus on Add Closing Count only. At the end of the document, we will explain Closing Count V2.

1. You may have a speed button, if not go to Inventory>Closing Count>Add Closing Count

• PAPER COUNTS

Instead of manually entering each SKU on a paper count you can choose to either Apply 0 or Apply Current On Hand for the selected Category/Vendor/Location. Choosing Apply 0 will let you just enter in the totals of all the products that you did see On Hand and count. Applying Current On Hand will allow you to just override any SKU that you counted with a different total than what the system currently says. To see the option to Apply Current On Hand, you must check off this option in Setup>Preferences>General>Advanced

If you used Closing Form to count, you will need to choose the correct date then select your Category, Vendor or Location(s) and Press Apply 0 > Post Closing Count > Count where you can filter by Show Short/Over Only and then sort by clicking on headers to match your closing form and start one by one entering in your correct count totals by selecting the hand with pencil icon at the top left. If you did that first to create a Variance Report to count on, then you can just start entering your count numbers.

If instead you press Apply Current On Hand > Post Closing Count, you can scroll through and edit the count on anything you found different from the current On Hand.

You are effectively in the Edit Closing Count stage at this point. Review the instructions below.

1. If appropriate: APPLY ZERO or APPLY CURRENT ON HAND - choose the Category(s) or Locations that you counted and press Apply Zero or Apply Current for Selected____.

• Apply 0 or Apply Current On Hand is not appropriate unless you are trying to count an ENTIRE Category, Vendor or Location.

• The Apply 0 function will post a count of 0 On Hand for every product within your filter (Category, Vendor or Location) that you did not enter a count for. This will effectively “count” all your Out of Stock/Delisted items as 0. It will also “count” all products as 0 that you accidentally missed counting. This is the most efficient way to ensure all your inventory gets counted and nothing is missed. Any missed items will show a variance on the count report and alert you to re-count and investigate to confirm your total On Hand.

• You must be careful that the correct Category, Vendor or Location filters have been applied so that you are not applying 0 to anything unintentionally.

• You must also be intentionally counting an entire Category, Vendor or Location. If you are purposely only counting a few products or random products that do not conform to any specific filters, applying 0 will mean you have to correct all others within that filter.

• You can Apply 0 by pressing either option below:

This will pop up two warning windows. Select “OK” to confirm. What this means is that if you missed any SKUs in the category, it would register a count of 0 for them and give you the chance to recount them to balance. For out-of-stock items it will register a count date and confirm they are 0 to ensure no items in your database are ever missed. It will not change the quantity of any SKUs you actually counted.

• Through this step your inventory On Hands have not changed in Product Maintenance, you can still make any necessary corrections or edits including deleting products right off the count by selecting the red minus sign.

Post-Closing Count

Once you are sure your count is ready, press “Post closing count” at the very top center. This will change all On Hand amounts in Barnet to the quantities you post. You will now automatically be in the Edit Closing Count stage where you will filter and print off a paper copy of items with discrepancies to do your second count.

Edit Closing Count

• Filter by choosing the Category, Location or Vendor you counted IF you have counted more than one on this day. Be aware that if you accidently counted something in the wrong category it will not show on the variance report if it is filtered out so make sure you also look at the screen without this chosen to note anything you may have posted incorrectly and include that category in your recount sheet now or later. It is a common error to miss things like this. There will be more on this at the end. Select “Show only Short/Over Items” and “Show Sold/On Hand”.

• Decide whether to print Short/Over or Variance Report to do your second count. Short Over is easier to understand for those that are not as proficient in math. Variance reports have additional room to write but can be confusing. Make sure to sort the report in a way that makes the most sense for your recount. For example, alphabetically.

Short/Over – you can see both the system quantity (the amount the system thought you had) and your variance.

Variance Report has a bit more room to write in the columns but does not show the original system quantity. You must do the math, in this example Chum Churum has 5 counted and it has a variance of +1 which means the system quantity was 5-1=4. Gekkeikan has a count of 5 and a variance of -1 meaning the system quantity was 5+1=6.

Second Count – In the above example on your second count you are going to look to see if maybe there are only 4 Chum Churum and you miscounted and if maybe there are actually 6 Gekkeikan.

**When you print, NEITHER OF THESE REPORTS SHOW SOLD. You need to check the screen for sold amounts and write them manually on your second count sheet paper to count them and if necessary, check the activity of these SKUs to see what time they sold. If you know you counted the item at 10 a.m. and it sold at 10:30 a.m. then the sold unit has nothing to do with your count and you should just go back and recount the product. If you know you did not count the SKU until well after 10:30 when it sold you do not have to re-count this SKU, you can just correct it as the missing one is the one sold.

This can get confusing. On your second count sheet, enter in the number sold by hand to effectively count them and then go around the store to re-count how many more you have to reach a total.

Also, note that any Receiving/Adjustments of these products that have happened before or during a count need to be accounted for. There is no field for this, you will need to check your Receiving table or Product activity in <Product Maintenance> in case any are causing a perceived variance. It makes sense to avoid Receiving Invoices for the product Categories/Vendors/Locations you are counting until the count is complete.

• If you closed the window or are opening another window, go to Inventory>Closing Count>Edit Closing Count. Make sure you check your date and choose the Category/Location you are doing and sort the screen the same way you did before you printed your second count sheet. Select the first item you want to correct and click the hand and pencil icon at the top left of the screen to edit

The edit section will open at the bottom of the page, and it defaults to “Quantity” for you to change the count total. You can also choose the “Shortage/Over” option and instead edit that to, for example, 0 if there is no variance. Press Save or Enter and it will take you down the list to the next item.

• FINAL COUNT – It is best practice to have a second person do a final count if there is still variance. Often a second set of eyes will see something the original person missed. When you have edited your first count, again print out either Short/Over or Variance report for this final count and write down any sold. You should choose your Location/Category and show only Short/Over and re-press the Show Sold/On Hand button to register any further sales that have occurred. Also check the report you can print called “Comparison Shortage Report”. This will show you any items from the same Category/Location that had variance the last time you counted it. This can help explain the variance you see now. For example, if you are currently over 1 unit of a product and the last time it was counted you were short one, the reason you are now over is that it was possibly a count error the time before. Or if you are now short a case and last time you were over a case you can assume a count error last time and don’t have to spend a bunch of time looking for it. Do further investigations on items with variance (see section below: INVESTIGATING VARIANCE 101) and enter any edits.

• Make sure you have not accidentally posted a count on anything you did not mean to. There are two ways to do this. A quick way is to look at the table at the bottom of the Variance Report. When you uncheck your category, if you hit “Apply,” it will show the full list of items and it might be hard to notice something out of place but if you load the Variance Report on the screen it shows variance by Group in a table at the bottom. In our example we counted the Asian Spirits Category. Note at the bottom of the report it shows variance in an extra Group – Wine. This alerts me that I need to see which wine was accidentally posted to 0. The total $ variance at the bottom of the screen is also an alert or filtering by Show Only Short Over and scrolling through will also catch this so that you can correct it.

• ACCEPT COUNT – Once you accept a count it cannot be changed except with the admin password. You will want to make sure that you accept all items when you are done not just the ones with Variance, so un-select “Show only Short/Over Items” first. Then you can choose to Accept “All” or highlight and Accept “Selected”.

INVESTIGATING VARIANCE 101

• After your second count of any SKUs with initial variance, if you still have variance you will want to investigate the causes. You may be able to post the SKU as correct and go in separately to create an adjustment for theft or breakage or submit for a vendor credit due to short shipment instead of posting a variance. Or maybe you need to make store protocol changes, re-train staff or decide to delist high clerk error SKUs or security tag certain high theft SKUs.

• Comparison Shortage Report

This report will give you a comparison between your current variance and any variance last time the products were counted. In the example below you can see Simply Spiked Lemonade that is currently +1 was -1 last count so potentially that was a count error last time. So, no need for much investigation. This report helps you notice SKUs that are out constantly so that you can make decisions on what to do to correct them based on the circumstances.

• In <Product Maintenance>, check SKU activity going back as far as the beginning of the previous month. That way you will see the last time the SKU was counted. Often you can discover the reasons for variance this way. You can look for whether there was a variance last time (or even go back further months as last month’s count errors should already have been noted on the Comparison Shortage Report). You can see if any adjustments were done (receiving with no order number) – check these in Receiving if they seem related or suspicious. Look for invoice receiving. Maybe you are missing a whole case and you have only one instance of receiving. You can find the actual original invoice; maybe it was entered incorrectly (or a wrong SKU was delivered). Maybe you will see the SKU was never actually checked off on the packing slip. You might be able to request a reshipment or refund from the vendor. If your variance is (+) you can look for clerk errors. Watch for instances when, on the same date and time, more than one unit of a SKU was sold but not by hitting multiple quantity.

• For example, you are over 1 unit of a 6Pack Cooler and in the activity, you see that at 10:33 it shows 1 unit sold, then below that another unit sold at the same time by the same clerk on the same receipt. This will indicate that the bottle was scanned twice instead of the clerk hitting 2 quantity which would show simply as 2 units sold. You could then watch your DVR. Perhaps you will see the customer only had 1 bottle and the clerk accidentally scanned it twice as they put it in a bag. This is a common error. Sometimes you will notice suspicious refunds in the activity that you can then investigate to see if they were handled properly. Below shows an example of two units being sold on the same receipt without the clerk pressing 2 Quantity. If they had, instead of showing 1 unit on two separate lines it would just have 1 line with 2 units. You can click on the line to open the receipt to see the order products were scanned.

• Shortages and overages in inventory can often correlate to clerk cash shortages and overages. Compare dates with cash variance and SKU activity. Use the above Activity report or check the SKUs in the Journal (POS Manager) / Sales Transactions (Portal) for a date range to see all receipts with it and look for any weird activity.

• Watch your DVR. Depending on the viewpoint of your DVR system you can sometimes discover theft, and you can often discover clerk errors.