How to Perform a Year-End Inventory Count with Spotcheck

Less daylight means fewer shooting hours. If you are already experiencing (or forecasting) calmer days in the equipment room, keep reading. And even if you don’t, the end-of-year period is always the right time to bring some actionable insights to the management table.

Inventory counts and audits

You run inventory audits to ensure that financial records match your physical inventory count. Especially after a busy period, you might want to double-check that everything is back in your gear cage. If so, you need a physical count to know what you have onsite.

It sounds complicated, but it isn’t with Cheqroom because we have Spotcheck.

Spotcheck allows you to do physical item counts faster. Instead of the paper-based checklist, you can use your phone or a scanner to check if the item scanned is at the right place at that specific moment. Don’t have your items labeled? Don’t worry. You can also select them manually, but it will take a bit longer.

Benefits of doing physical inventory counts with Cheqroom

• Physical inventory counts are essential to keeping your inventory records accurate and spotting missing items. When you have up-to-date records, you can budget purchases and ensure you always have the right amount of gear on hand. So, no more delayed projects.
• Access all items’ information directly. Missing an item? Check the item’s history, who used it last, and follow up on it. This will save you plenty of time.
• Let’s be honest. Nobody likes doing admin. Spotcheck takes the paperwork away and shortens the audit process. If you use barcodes and a scanner, you won’t need days but hours to finish your item check.
• Once you’re done, generate reports and start your strategy game. You can see what items in your gear cage are obsolete and costing you more to stock them than actually generating profit. Maybe you can sell them and invest in new items. Remember that every day an item remains on the shelf unused, decreasing its value. Read more on reports for decision-making here.

Spotcheck levels for inventory counts

You don’t need to do it all at once. You can benefit from the different levels of Spotcheck.

Locations:
You must ensure that all your inventory is physically in your gear cage at some point. Perform a Spotcheck by location, and detect missing equipment by scanning everything present. Perfect for audits!

Categories:
If you want to know how many items there are in a certain category(physically present) or know if some are missing, the Categories Spotcheck is just what you need. Select the right equipment category and start scanning what’s in the room.

Items in long-term gear assignment:
Did you assign equipment to employees or students? Is someone leaving the company? Use the long-term gear assignment Spotcheck to verify that everyone has the correct equipment and that nothing is missing. Check everyone’s roles & permissions. You can also allow your people to run long-term gear assignment Spotchecks themselves.

Kits: 
If you use kits, there’s no easier and faster way to check if a kit is complete than with a Spotcheck. Take your phone, create the Spotcheck, and scan all items inside the kit. You will immediately know if the kit is incomplete.

Tips & best practices when preparing for an inventory count

There are many ways to prepare an audit or inventory count. They depend on your company size -if you are a public company, you probably have an external company that will do the audit, and certain processes will be in place- If you are on your own like many other equipment managers, here are some valuable tips:

• Use Spotcheck - what else. 💁‍♀️
• Use Cheqroom’s app or USB scanner.
• Stop operations when doing the count (no checkouts or check-ins).
• Split the process. First start with kits, then do locations.
• Address discrepancies immediately.
• Create reports afterward and present them to all stakeholders.