Year-end stocktake

DAVID LAWES

Can any of you folks out there give me some guidance on conducting a year-end stocktake in circumstances when you can't close the business for the day of the stocktake and goods are moving in and out? Accounting for such movements is easy to say, but far from easy to do. Anyone got any ideas on how to make it easier, taking account also of the fact that much of our stock is single sheets of printed paper (about 1.6 million of them)?

T.C.

Night-shift stock take??

Jon_1984

Everywhere Iv worked where stocktake is not possible in opening hours have had staff in at the weekend to conduct it.

Out of curisosity what is the value of said paper and turnover of company - is there a need to do a full stocktake? If it your stock is all sufficently low value items a full stocktake may not be required.

DAVID LAWES

Year-end stocktake

Unfortunately I work for a public sector organisation and our own internal rules require the stocktake to be done. The value is, in any case, substantial enough to warrant a full stocktake. My staff don't work shifts as such but could be persuaded (though not forced) to come in at a weekend to do it - in fact I have suggested the weekend nearest to 31st March, the year-end date. But if the 31st of the month doesn't fall on a weekend date, surely they will still have to do adjustments for goods moving in and out from the last weekend day to the 31st of the month, and that is the difficult bit. If the 31 March falls on a Friday, that's the worst case scenario of all ; that means staff coming in on the nearest weekend date prior to 31 March, in this particular case it would be Sunday 26 March. That leaves a whole 5 working days' worth of movements into and out of the premises to be accounted for, and if this isn't done correctly, the stock count will not be correct AS AT 31 March, which is what the auditors will be looking for. The other solution, when 31 March falls on a Friday, might be to do the count over the weekend of 1st and 2nd April, which in this case would be a Saturday and Sunday - but if auditors turn up unannounced, as they are entitled to do, won't they expect to see counting being done on 31 March? Or am I getting hung up on procedure?

The other issue to consider is what happens when the 31st March falls on a Saturday or Sunday. It's not happened so far in my current job. If my staff could be persuaded to come in on those dates (and I can't force them) it would be ideal ; stocktake done on the day, with nothing moving into or out of the premises to complicate things. But if I couldn't persuade them to come into work on a weekend, which would be better ; finish the count on the last working day before 31 March? Or the first working day afterwards? Either way it wouldn't be a true count AS AT 31 March - but does it really matter?

Rinske

If the year end of the 31st falls on a Friday or in the weekend, the stock taking should be fairly easily done in the weekend afterwards (provided you got the staff) as the last stock moving would have been recorded, so you don't have to make adjustments.

If the year end falls on another day, it might be worth doing it on the day after (provided you can keep track of all the stock moving that day and for example count the stock that might go out first, before sending anything out and all stock that comes in on the counting day, in a separate area that won't be counted).

If you do it in a weekend before the year end date, you can keep track of all stock that comes in and goes out up until the year end and make an adjustment for those items and the value, by adding new stock and deducting the stock sent out.

If you do it in a weekend after the year end date, you can keep track of all stock again, but do the adjustments the other way around.

I would always recommend to use the date closest to the actual year end date, as it most likely means fewer adjustments.

Usually the auditors would want to attend the stock take, so by letting them know when it is and what time you start, they can then decide whether they want to attend or not.

However I am not an expert on stocktaking, so this just seems most logical to me.

Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Rinske