TUTORIAL: Introduction to Stocktaking
We'll Cover
This tutorial should take approximately 11 minutes to complete.
What is Stocktaking?
Stocktaking is the act of physically counting your material and product stock. In doing this regularly, you'll be able to see your exact stock on hand and identify any issues with your production processes.
Adding a Stocktake
Each time you count a sample of your stock, you'll want to create a new Stocktake in Craftybase to record this information. You can do this by navigating to your Stocktakes page via the ⋮ icon located in your top navigation menu (select Stocktakes from the menu that appears).
This page will be where your complete history of stocktakes will appear. To add a new Stocktake, click the + Add Stocktake button that appears in the top right-hand corner of the page.
The Stocktake Form
The Stocktake form allows you to configure the items you would like the system to select for your stocktake.
As Craftybase is a perpetual inventory inventory system, it is not necessary to count every item each time you stocktake.
You'll first notice on this form that your stock date cannot be changed - the count needs to be calculated on the date that it is created to ensure that accurate stock numbers are displayed. If you are not going to do a count today, you'll want to wait until you have the time before you generate the stocktake record. If you are looking to enter a stocktake from a previous date, you'll want to do this manually via inventory adjustments rather than the stocktake area.
The second field is for your Stocktake Code: this is for your reference only. You can either keep the pre-populated stocktake code or choose your own coding system here.
Next is an area for you to write any Notes about your stocktake. For example, you might like to note if you had any helpers to do this count or why you selected this particular sample of materials to count.
The next section is where you can set filters and the number of items; this is for configuring your sample size in more detail. It allows you to select your sample method and specific filters to apply to your material list.
Stocktake Type only has a single option available at present: Material. Stocktaking capabilities for products will eventually be added to this flow.
The next field is for selecting a Sampling Method. This allows you to either generate a list of all materials that match the filter criteria or, alternatively, generate a randomized set of materials to count.
If you have created categories for your materials, you'll find these listed under the Categories heading. You'll want to select these if you want to limit your stocktake set to select from only specific categories. To select from all categories, leave all boxes blank in this section.
The Total Count Size allows you to set a maximum number of items to return for your stocktake. This can be useful if you would only like to count a certain number of your items per stocktake (i.e. if you would like to generate a random set of 30 items to count). This box will default to 100; however, you can set this to any number you like.
By default, the stocktake will display by the name of the material; however, if you wish to use SKU instead, you'll want to select this from the Sort dropdown.
Finally, the Last Stocktake Before field allows you to select only materials that have not been included in a stocktake from a certain date.
To bring it all together, if you would like to create a stocktake list of 200 Essential Oils that have not been counted since 1 January 2019, you'll select:
Sampling Method: All
Categories: Essential Oils
Total Count Size: 200
Sort: Name
Last Stocktake Before 1 Jan 2019.
Once you have configured your stocktake, click the Generate Items to Stocktake button. This will then take you to a new page, where your list will begin generating - if your sample size is quite large, this can take a couple of minutes to complete.
Each of your stocktake items will be shown on a row of the table - for each one, you'll want to count your physical stock of this item, enter it into the Actual Quantity box, and then press the double-tick icon to confirm.
The display will change to indicate any differences in stock and will calculate an Accuracy Rating for the material. There are four different ratings: Perfect (when the count is the same), Very Good (+/-2%), Good (+/-3%), Okay (+/-10%), and Review (Above +/-10%). More details about the accuracy rating system can be found in our help article here: How is the stocktake accuracy rating calculated?
Very small quantities of stock (less than 20) will show greater variance in your accuracy ratings, so it may not require review.
Once the count has been entered, it will be marked as completed and cannot be edited further. If a change has been recorded, a stocktake inventory adjustment will be recorded for the material difference to bring your physical and recorded stock levels in line. This adjustment can be viewed via the Adjustments tab on your material page.
Each stocktake that the material is involved in will also be recorded under the Stocktakes tab on the material page for reference.
Have some questions?
If you have any additional questions, please get in touch, and we'll be happy to help.