When planning for a stock count, it’s important to agree on the timing with the needs of the business and accounting. It’s also crucial to agree on items which are to be counted, teams counting and other relevant procedures, i.e. how exactly this counting should be performed. 

When we talk about the needs of the business, it’s not just to say that for accounting we should do it as close to year-end as possible, but also taking into account vacations, considerable transfers at period end (i.e. considering that after this transaction the stock levels will be considerably lower for an example), etc.

Agreeing on items to be counted is as important as agreeing on the timing – are all goods to be counted, are just groups of items to be included and what if we consider counting some at a later date?

Members of the teams that are counting is something that should be considered in terms of number of members within the team and whether the team should include non-warehouse personnel (i.e. if there should be people within the team who aren’t daily responsible for the existence of the goods).

Procedures for the general stock count should be previously prepared and either discussed during the beginning of the stock count or written and understanding confirmed by relevant means.