Cycle Count in Real-Time

Achieve visibility into inventory due to real-time cycle counting

Inventory accuracy isn’t possible without cycle counting

Think about your current pick process today – how often do your pickers face interruptions due to inaccurate inventory? And how much time are you losing as a result?

By regularly counting inventory on an ongoing basis, companies can minimize exceptions, improve inventory accuracy, and reduce pick time. Unfortunately, many companies treat cycle counts like fiscal inventories that shut down operations for days or even weeks due to software forcing you to clear out item fulfillments and ensure all shipments are completed before getting started.

ShipHawk WMS enables you to incorporate counts into your everyday pick strategies and as a result, take advantage of best practices in the warehouse.

Cycle counting best practices

Cycle counting best practices result in a more efficient warehouse

ShipHawk WMS supports cycle count best practices, which include various methodologies including directed counting, interleaved counting, manual counting, and physical counting. Implementing filters, such as counting bins with less than five units or verifying empty bins, enhances accuracy and efficiency. Additionally, ShipHawk WMS’ cycle counting offers flexibility in creating count plans tailored to specific needs, ensuring ongoing inventory accuracy monitoring. By incorporating cycle counting into your warehouse operations, you can better support your business in achieving optimal inventory management and operational efficiency.

Cycle count & pick strategies

Focused cycle counting works with your pick strategies

By including count tasks in a pick assignment, your team can better support the integrity of your inventory in real-time while continuing with their daily pick tasks. With ShipHawk’s interleaved cycle counting, after picking from a bin location, if the inventory is below the low quantity threshold, ShipHawk WMS will require the user to count the remaining quantity as part of their regular tasks. While this is a quick task for the picker, it results in downstream effects that tell the purchasing team more inventory is needed. It’s also a big win for auditors – keeping inventory accurate without the need for large-scale physical counts.

Cycle counts can be incorporated into picks including:

Batch
Super batch
Cluster
Wave
Consolidation
Order

Watch our 6 ways to pick for maximum efficiency here.

Cycle counts supported

ShipHawk WMS cycle count software supports:

Focused and direct cycle counts with manager approval
Interleaved counting
Exception counting
End-of-year physical counts
A dashboard that provides real-time visibility into inventory

While picking orders, if your team comes across an inventory variance between what the system says and what they see on the bin/shelf, ShipHawk WMS alerts your operations team by reporting the variance on their handheld device, and then they can continue picking.

From there, warehouse managers can review the reported variances on a dashboard and approve them by accepting the inventory count, which will automatically update within your ERP to reflect the variance detected, or, request a recount which will instruct an operator to recount the specific item/bin combination.

Cycle count benefits

Benefits of real-time cycle counting include:

High levels of inventory accuracy that keep your operations running smoothly and potentially avoid end-of-year shutdowns for full physical counts. It also removes the need for an inventory control specialist
Fewer unplanned stockouts and exceptions increase customer satisfaction
A WMS dashboard that lets you detect inventory accuracy problems or issues by having real-time visibility into inventory accuracy by year, month, day, or against a specific plan. The dashboard also lets you know whether or not your company is performing at industry standards
With ShipHawk WMS, advanced cycle count comes out of the box. No additional paid packages are required

“Our count issues during picking went from almost hourly discrepancies to a minimal amount, if any. The ability to do real-time cycle counts keeps our inventory accuracy high and, in turn, order processing smooth.” Douglas Hunter, Warehouse Operations Manager at Spyderco

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