Use inventory counts to reconcile inventory, determine shrinkage and correct your inventory counts. You can do either full or partial counts.

Understanding inventory counts

Special orders, layaways and work orders shouldn't be included in inventory counts. Only count items in stock and ready to sell. An inventory count can't be imported or merged to another count.

Inventory counts measure discrepancies in inventory levels. Sales or added inventory don't change a discrepancy. For example, if you're short 2 hats, your adjustment will be -2 to quantity on hand for the hat. That doesn’t change as you sell items or receive purchase orders. The quantity on hand is still off by -2.

You can perform both full inventory counts and spot counts.

• Full count: If you want to count all your inventory, do it in one count so any products you miss appear in the Missed list. Items in the Missed list are items that you weren't able to count. Find out why you missed them, and either enter a count for each item or zero them out by clicking Missed in the left menu.
• Spot count: If you're only counting part of your inventory, you can filter categories, tags, or brands within the Missed list of the inventory count.

Creating an inventory count

1. From the main menu, click Inventory > Inventory Counts > +New Inventory Count.

2. Name your count.

3. If you have a multi-store account, select your shop. Once you add items to the count, you can't change the shop you selected.

4. Click Save Changes.

Counting inventory with a barcode scanner

Counting with a barcode scanner is ideal for smaller inventory counts, or when items are accessible to a device running Lightspeed POS.

1. Click the Scan or enter items search field and ensure that your cursor is blinking.

   

2. Optionally, you can click Enter scan mode to speed up the scanning process. Usually, you must wait for SKU scans to be processed before scanning the next item. Scan mode adds scanned items to a Pending scans queue, letting you scan the next item while Retail POS processes the item. This lets you scan as quickly as you'd like.
3. Use the barcode scanner to scan each item.

   Scan the same item multiple times to increase the counted quantity. If you have a large amount of the same item to count, click the Counted quantity field next to the item on the list and enter a value from 1 to 99. For values larger than 99, scan the item again and apply the extra count.

Counting inventory using printouts

Printouts are ideal for medium-to-large counts. You can print a list of all items to count from the Print item list page. These can be given to staff to record quantities, and then entered into Lightspeed Retail.

1. On the Inventory count page, click Print item list.
2. Select a Sort by option from the Sort by item ID or Sort by description lists.
3. Print the generated list and mark the quantity of each item in the Count box.
4. Once all items on the printout are counted, return to Retail POS. Enter each item ID on the printout into the ID field and the corresponding quantity into the Count field, then click Enter count.

Counting items with a spreadsheet import

Importing items with a spreadsheet. This is ideal for large inventory counts. Items can be counted and the quantities formatted into a spreadsheet (CSV or XLSX), and added to the count automatically.

1. Create a CSV or XLSX spreadsheet. Name two columns ID and Count. You can get a sample file by clicking View sample file download template in the Import Items section of the count.
2. In the ID column, enter the System ID, UPC, EAN, Custom SKU or manufacturer SKU associated with the item in Retail POS.

   If you aren't sure what to enter in the ID column, navigate to Inventory > Item search, find the item, then click Export to download a spreadsheet containing item details.

3. Count your items.
4. In the Count column, enter item quantities.
5. Save the spreadsheet as a CSV or XLSX file type.
6. On the Inventory count page in Retail POS, click Select file and choose the spreadsheet you created. You can also drag and drop the file into the Import items field.
7. When the File has been uploaded message is displayed, click Map columns.
8. Ensure that your file and Lightspeed columns are correctly mapped
   
   • System ID to System ID
   • Count to Count
9. Click Verify file. Retail POS will check the import file for errors and when successful, display an Import overview.

   If there are errors in the import file, an error message will be displayed. Click Download this file, fix the errors, then re-import.

10. Click Import.

Reviewing and reconciling the count

Reconciling the count is when you change your inventory records to match your physical count. As you reconcile, a progress bar will track your real-time progress.

1. Within the Inventory Count, click Missed. This displays uncounted inventory items. Items in this list have no inventory adjustments. If you're doing a partial count, there will always be items in this list.

2. To set an item to have a count of zero, click Zero beside the item. If you want to set every item in this list to have a count of zero, click the checkbox beside Zero Selected Items, and then click Zero Selected Items. This function adjusts your inventory records for all counted items.

3. When you're sure the list is accurate, reconcile your inventory. On the Inventory count page, click Reconcile.

4. When you're certain that your counts are correct, click Reconcile > Reconcile inventory.

5. After reconciling, on the left menu click Shrinkage to view how much inventory was lost due to shrinkage.

Inventory changes during a count 

After you complete your count, if any items are highlighted in yellow with a QOH Changed button, it means inventory changed after you entered the count for the item. This can be any sort of change, such as a sale, purchase order, transfer or manual adjustment.

If you're doing a count for a multi-store account, this change only reflects the store you're doing the count for.

What's next?