Counting inventory

When you set up your company file, you may have entered your opening inventory quantities using the Count Inventory.

You can also use the Count Inventory window to make adjustments to item quantities during regular inventory counts or any time you find discrepancies between the actual quantities of items on hand and your records of those quantities.

Each inventory adjustment must be allocated to an account so your accounting records accurately reflect the reasons for the adjustment. For example, many businesses use an expense account called ‘Shrinkage/Spoilage’ to track loss or theft of their items.

Before you record an inventory count

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Make sure you record all built items before counting your inventory. Otherwise, a missing inventory item that was used to build another item will be accounted for as an expense, such as loss or shrinkage. For more information, see ‘Building items’.

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Count the actual items in your inventory. You can print the Inventory Count Sheet report, which lists all your inventory items, and manually record your actual items on this.

note : Inventory-count report options

You can print the Inventory Count Sheet either by clicking Print in the Count Inventory window or, if you want to set filters, from the Index to Reports window.

To record an inventory count

Go to the Inventory command centre and click Count Inventory.

If you have inventory at multiple locations, filter the list as required.

Click Print to print the Inventory Count Sheet.

Manually count your inventory and note down the quantities on the Inventory Count Sheet.

In the Count Inventory window, type the actual quantities of the inventory items in the Counted column. If an item is held in multiple locations, enter the stock held at each location. Any discrepancy between the counted quantity and the on-hand quantity appears in the Difference column.

Click Adjust Inventory. If there are differences between on-hand and counted values, the Adjustment Information window appears.

If you use the same account to track adjustments for all items, you can select a default adjustment account for tracking the adjustments you entered in the Count Inventory window. This saves you having to enter an account on every line of the inventory adjustment. This account should be an expense account such as Shrinkage/Spoilage. It should not be your inventory asset account.

Click Continue. The Adjust Inventory window appears, displaying a line item for each adjustment you entered in the Count Inventory window in step 5.

If you entered a default adjustment account at step 6, that account appears in the Account column for each line item.

If you didn’t enter a default adjustment account, enter an account against each item listed.

[Optional] Enter a reason for the adjustment in the Memo column (for example, Annual inventory count 2008).

Click Record to update your inventory.