Organize
To help reduce errors when counting inventory, organize departments and divide into sections small enough to quickly verify the totals for each section or re-count the section. If a section has several hundred items, it may be better to break the section down further as long as it’s identifiable. Dividing into smaller sections helps make it easier to verify counts for an item when the count result disagrees with the inventory, or to find misplaced products after counting.
Example: dance store divided into areas and shelves
In this example, we have a dance store carrying shoes, clothing and accessories. We divide it into areas by dance type and rooms: tap area, ballet area, jazz area, back stock room, and front area. Each area and room is broken down into by structures such as shelving units, clothing racks, and wall wire racks. Here we decide to name each structure by area such as “back” for the stock room and “jazz” for the jazz area, followed by the type of structure (shelf, rack) and number each structure. If you have a bar code printer, you may wish to tape a bar code to the structure for faster entry.
“Location” may be a Room, Shelf, or rack
In Dee Count, we call each of these numbered structures a location. You may have other buildings such as other stores or warehouses which you can use as your locations in Dee Count or prefix the location names and divide the buildings into areas depending on your needs. For this example, we have only one physical store and have chosen to divide the store by area and structure.
First Location
Dee Count starts with a single location. Since we’re starting our counting in the jazz area at the first shelving unit, we will change the name from “New Location” to “Jazz Shelf 1″ using the on-screen keyboard.
Photos make it quicker to identify the location or if the shelf label disappears. Click the camera icon to snap a photo on iPad 2, or select a photo from photos album if is using iPad 1. Tap the done button to start counting.
If you make a mistake
You may tap the Edit button to change location name, photo, or delete items. Delete item by tapping the minus in the red circle beside the item and then the delete button as seen in the screenshot below.
Remove the location using the garbage can at the bottom. To remove all items, tap the curved arrow button in the top-right corner and select Clear All Items.
delete location
Select a quantity to count by
Packages may come with multiple selling units like nylon boxes in the stock room hold 3 items. Tap the appropriate quantity to count by, or “?” to enter a different value to use as the default. As you enter item numbers, this quantity will remain the default until tapping another count quantity. The “?” may be handy to add counts at once for products without bar codes, or update after re-counting by hand.
count-by selection and item number input
Quickly scan each UPc and let the app count for you
The Add text box will stay selected as you enter item numbers. Starting at the top of Jazz Shelf 1, we scan each bar code to add a single count for each box. The nice part about scanning is that we don’t have to pay attention to sizes and colors, or if products have been misplaced. Just scan each package and let the software do the counting. As we count, a log on the right shows scan order with most recent at top. This is handy to review in the case of missed packages or accidental double-counts. The top-right corner shows the current total for the location.
First 6 scans. Log shows shelf out of order.
ok button appears only when connected to scanner or external keyboard
Most scanners include a return key at the end of input which automatically enters the item in Dee Count. If your scanner doesn’t include the return key, there is an OK button that only appears when your external keyboard or scanner is connected.
Part way down the shelf, Totals look like our only location
verify location total
Upon finishing entering all products on Jazz Shelf 1, we can verify the shelf total has 162 items as indicated. If so, then we are ready to move to the next location. Tap the + button to add another location for the next shelf.
Jazz Shelf 1 should have 162 boxes
Review totals and item details
At any time we can review the totals of all locations by tapping the Totals button. The bottom sums the total counts and how many different items. Tapping an item in the list reveals the details where we can update a product description and review all the locations the item was counted at. We have also imported comparison counts which reveals our errors as in the selected item below. (See Import Inventory Example.)
Includes comparison counts
The above screen shots show that we counted one more dance sneaker than our inventory software claims. We can check the three locations to make sure we counted right.