Every device, and the spares
On charge overnight, spare batteries in the cradle. A scanner that dies at eleven is an hour of counting lost while somebody hunts for a charger.
Setup checklist · before the day
A stocktake is won in the fortnight before it.
Almost everything that goes wrong on a count day was decided weeks earlier: a label that will not scan, a bin that is not in the file, wifi that stops at the back of aisle nine, an operator holding a scanner for the first time at seven in the morning.
This is the list we work through with customers. It is on the site rather than in an email because there is nothing secret in it — it is thirty-five years of finding out the hard way. Print it and walk around with it.
Never run one before? Start with how to do a stocktake — the decisions and the order to do them in, most of which is true whatever you count with. Then come back here for the fortnight.
Four weeks out
Get the data right first, because everything else depends on it.
A scan that finds nothing stops an operator dead. Every one of these is cheap now and expensive at six in the morning on the day.
01
Export your part file and look at it
Part number and description is the minimum. Check the part numbers are the ones printed on the labels in the warehouse — not an internal id, not a supplier code, the thing the barcode actually holds. If those two differ, decide now which one you are counting with.
02
List every bin location, including the ones nobody likes
Receiving, quarantine, the returns cage, the mezzanine, the container out the back, the bench in the workshop. Stock in a place with no bin location has nowhere to be counted, and it will not turn up as missing either — it will just be absent.
03
Load both into the portal, then load them again if they change
Reference data goes in from the dashboard as CSV, previewed before it is saved. Loading replaces what is there rather than adding to it, so the file you load is the whole truth — which is the right way round, but it means a partial file quietly removes everything not in it.
Parts are held for the company. Bin locations are held per site.
04
Set the largest count anyone can type
A counter meaning “none” on an old system often typed 9999, and the habit outlives the system. The portal lets you cap the biggest quantity a scanner will accept, and decide whether zero is a legal count at all. Set it to something real for your stock and a mistyped total is refused on the spot instead of surfacing in a report three days later.
Two weeks out
Labels and coverage. Both are walked, not assumed.
These two are checked on foot, in the building, by somebody holding a scanner. There is no other way to know.
05
Print a sheet of bin labels and scan them off the paper
The portal prints bin location labels, fourteen to a page. Print one sheet and scan every label on it before you print four hundred. It takes two minutes and it catches a wrong symbology, a quiet zone too tight, or a label too small for the scanner you are using — while it is still one sheet of paper.
06
Put the bin labels up, at a height a person can scan
Not behind the pallet. Not at knee level on the bottom beam unless you want someone kneeling four hundred times. Same place on every bay, so an operator stops looking for the label and starts scanning it.
07
Walk the wifi with the scanner, not with a phone
Phones have better aerials than warehouse scanners and will lie to you. Walk the far corners, the cold store, the mezzanine, the back of deep racking and the loading dock. A count that does not reach the portal is not recorded — the operator is told at the time, but they are told while standing there, and that is the wrong moment to discover a dead spot.
08
Test the lookups before there is a stocktake to test
Check Products and Check Locations work whether or not a stocktake is running. Take a scanner into the aisles and scan real labels — parts and bins — and watch the description come back. This is the single most useful hour in the whole list, and it can be done the moment the data is loaded.
The week before
People, and a count that does not matter.
The day of the stocktake is a bad morning to meet a scanner. Training and testing time is not charged, so there is nothing to save by skipping it.
09
One username each, not one shared login
Every count carries the name of the person who made it. That is how the report by operator works, how a query on a figure gets answered, and how somebody can correct their own mistake — a person can edit and delete their own counts and nobody else's. A shared login throws all of that away.
10
Pick the counting mode per person
It is a fact about their hands, not about the device, so it is set on their account and they can change it on the scanner. Keypad for someone typing on real keys, buttons for a touchscreen, and Scan/Increment for anyone working a rail of identical stock. The three modes are explained here — show people the one they will use, not all three.
11
Run a practice count on real racking
One aisle, twenty minutes, with the people who will be counting. Everything you have set up gets exercised at once: labels, wifi, logins, modes, and whether the part numbers match. Then look at the practice count on the portal so people see where their work lands.
12
Agree what happens to stock that moves
Goods arriving mid-count, orders going out, a forklift moving a pallet between two counted bins. Decide before the day whether you stop movement, quarantine inbound until after, or count it where it lands. This is the question that turns a clean count into an argument, and it is not a software question.
The day before, and the day
Short list, because the work was done already.
CHARGE
OPEN
An admin activates the stocktake
Operators cannot start one. It is created and activated on the portal, for one site, by somebody with an admin login — so make sure that person is awake and reachable at the hour you start.
EMPTY
Mark empty bins, do not skip them
A bin recorded as empty is a fact. A bin nobody visited is a gap. They look identical at the end of the day unless the operator says which it was, so tell people to record the empties as they go.
Before you close it
The reports that tell you whether you have finished.
A stocktake stays open as long as you need it, and closing it is a deliberate act. Do not do it until these have been read — going back is far easier while the count is still open and the people are still on site.
MISSED
Unscanned parts and unscanned bins
The two reports that answer “are we done?”. An unscanned bin is usually an aisle somebody thought was somebody else's.
ODD
By operator, and the bar graph
One person's numbers looking unlike everyone else's is worth ten minutes of conversation before the crew goes home, not a week later.
OUT
Export before you close
Every report goes to CSV with the same columns you see on screen. Take the export while the count is fresh, whether or not your system needs it yet.
Want us to walk it with you?
We have been setting these up since 1991, and the walk-through is part of a hire, not an extra. Tell us the week you are counting and we will go through this list with whoever is running it.