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.

Counted on the device, not at a desk

A count is walking the shelves with a scanner, so it happens on the POS device. Scan a product and its shelf opens; enter what is there; scan the next. The list puts the shelves nobody has looked at yet first, so the walk ends when the top of it runs out.

A shelf counted as empty is counted. Zero is an answer, and it is not the same as a shelf nobody reached — which is why a count with shelves still untouched cannot be sent for review at all.

Counts taken with no signal are kept on the device and sent when it comes back. A shelf recounted while one is still waiting replaces it rather than queueing behind it: a count states what is there, so the last one has to win.

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

  Stocky is gone and I relied on Fill Shelves. What do I use now?

• Stocky alternatives, compared honestly

  Stocky is gone. Which app should I actually be looking at?

• Choosing a Stocky replacement

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