Stocktaking Without Chaos: A Checklist to Get Your Warehouse Through Physical Inventory

In this episode of Rozmowy Logistyków, Piotr Skobało explains how to run a warehouse stocktake without chaos or stopping the business. In checklist form, he shows how to design the process to be predictable, fast, and cheap.

WHO'S ACCOUNTABLE, AND WHO COUNTS

The process starts with appointing a stocktaking lead and a committee of at least two people — transparency is crucial, because large companies have external auditors (often from the "Big Four") who spot-check the result. Good practice for counting teams: two independent people from different parts of the company, not two warehouse workers from the same shift — this minimizes the risk of a skewed count, at the cost of some counters knowing the goods less well. The law requires a count at least once every two years; in practice, it's usually done annually.

PREPARATION STARTS WEEKS EARLIER

You need to define the exact scope (which warehouses, zones, exclusions like a buffer of recent deliveries), set a date in agreement with sales (to avoid a Sunday phone call asking "why isn't anything selling"), and document the whole process for the organization. The number of people needed is estimated by measuring time per location (e.g. 30 seconds per shelf, 80 seconds per pallet) multiplied by the number of locations in each zone — this is "logistics engineering" that decides whether the process fits within the window before sales reopen.

CONSOLIDATION AND TIDYING UP BEFORE THE COUNT

A few days before counting, you need to get physical locations as closely aligned with the system as possible: consolidate the same SKU scattered across several spots, tag problem items (yellow tape, "not applicable"), close out pending receipt/issue documents, and resolve known discrepancies beforehand instead of doing it during the actual count. This is the moment to identify bottlenecks — because the classic scenario is 95% of the stock counted while waiting on a handful of difficult, neglected locations that can block the whole process for hours.

THE COUNTING METHOD, AND A RECOUNT FOR DISPUTED ITEMS

The safest (though time-consuming) method is two completely independent counts compared against each other, only then checked against the system record — a true physical inventory. A cheaper alternative: a single count compared directly against the system, where a discrepancy triggers a recount. It's worth having a "super team" of the most experienced people to verify the biggest discrepancies — an initial reading of differences shouldn't trigger panic, because the typical cause is a simple mistake (e.g. someone counted 10,000 units instead of 100 per case pack) that disappears after one verification.

THE FINAL REPORT, AND THE MOST IMPORTANT SIDE EFFECT

The final report goes to controlling and the board broken down by value, quantity, and category, with an inventory accuracy metric and recommendations — often including a recommendation to introduce cycle counting, because right after a big, painful stocktake is exactly when it's easiest to convince the organization to adopt it. The real reward for a well-run process isn't the report itself for accounting — it's a warehouse where, after the stocktake, everything actually is where it should be, and work in the following days visibly runs more smoothly.