How to do a physical inventory without closing your business

Before counting: prepare or fail

80% of the success of an inventory is decided before counting the first piece. Without preparation, you end up with duplicate counts, forgotten areas, and differences that no one can explain.

• Freeze movements: define a window (night or Sunday) without entries or exits. If you cannot close, clearly mark what arrives during the count to count separately.
• Order before counting: merchandise of the same SKU together, clear aisles, damaged product separated.
• Divide the space into numbered zones and assign managers per zone — no one counts "where it falls."
• Print or upload count lists to the app WITHOUT visible theoretical stock: counting "blind" prevents people from confirming the system number without counting.
• Define beforehand how findings are recorded: product without label, damaged or expired.

The count: double verification method

The professional standard is double counting: one person counts each zone, and differences against the system are recounted by a DIFFERENT person. Only differences confirmed by the second count are adjusted.

With a barcode reader (or a cell phone camera with an app like Aura's), counting involves scanning and typing the amount — without paper or subsequent capture, which is where half of the errors are born.

After counting: adjusting is the least important, understanding is everything

Once the count is finished, the system should show you the differences: leftovers and shortages by SKU, valued in money. Adjusting the system to the actual count takes one click. The valuable thing comes later: understanding WHY there were differences.

• Shortages concentrated in small and expensive products: typical pattern of ant theft.
• Even shortages in many SKUs: it is usually a process — unrecorded sales, uncaptured transfers, miscounted receipts.
• Leftovers: almost always uncaptured receptions or unrecorded returns. A surplus is NOT good news: it is the same lack of control with another sign.
• Calculate your shrink percentage (valued difference / inventory value). Above 1-2% in retail, you have an active problem to attack.

Cycle counting: the end of suffering inventories

The secret to business with reliable inventory is not the giant annual count: it is the cycle count. Each week you count a small portion — products A (most valuable or best-selling) several times a year, products C only once.

Fifteen minutes a day of cycle counting keeps your inventory accuracy above 95% year-round, detects leaks in days (not December), and makes the annual inventory a procedure and not a traumatic event.

In Aura, the inventory module suggests what to count each week, records the counts from the cell phone with a scanner and applies the adjustments with an audit of who counted what and when. Everything connected to your sales, purchases and warehouses.