Cycle counting from the floor

Small and frequent beats annual

A full stocktake is a day the shop is not selling, and the numbers start decaying the moment it ends. Counting a few bins each week catches drift while it is still small enough to explain.

The products worth counting most often are the fast movers, the high-value lines, and anything the alerts have flagged as drifting.

Blind counting, and why

Blind mode does not show the expected quantity. People type what the screen says — not from dishonesty, but because a number on a screen is a strong prior when you are counting a crowded shelf.

The expected figure is omitted from the response entirely, not hidden in the interface. Hidden data is still data that can be read.

Review before anything changes

Counting produces a variance report, not an adjustment. Nothing reaches Shopify until someone approves it, and a variance above your threshold needs a manager.

When the adjustment is applied, it carries the quantity that was expected when counting began. If someone edited that product in Shopify admin meanwhile, the write fails rather than overwriting their change.

Common questions

What if a line does not get counted?

The count cannot be approved with uncounted lines. Applying it would compare an expectation against nothing and zero real stock.

Other guides

• Replacing Stocky’s Fill Shelves workflow

  Stocky is going away and Fill Shelves is the part my staff use daily.

• Choosing a Stocky replacement

  Which app do I move to, and am I replacing one thing or several?

• How a Fill Shelves workflow works

  I understand the idea. What are the actual moving parts?