Need a new procedure - Inventory stock count

[barbola]

Our warehouse has a difficult time keeping up with their stock counts (don't ask me why). The way GP does it is very inconvenient for them. I set up the count cycle to be 80 days (~4 months) so they only need to count about 50 items per day but every few months I have to re-set it all up again because they fall days and weeks behind.

The problem is, it assigns count date by item number. I was hoping to be able to use bins or something but can't seem to get that working, and it affects ALL our inventory items, even ones not for that site. We only use one SiteID for this warehouse.

I tested using bins but then it asked me for a bin number with every single inventory transaction and this was not what we wanted at all.

The way it is now, they may spend one day counting nails and screws so this would take hours, and the next day they would count pressure washers and tshirts, so it would be much quicker. I guess they want this evened out as well somehow.

What do other businesses do for this? There is no "bin" option when using Mass Add, it only adds by count date. Unless we manually go in and assign count dates to specific items based on say the aisle they are in, I don't know how else to proceed.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[jazgeek]

when we used to do cycle counts in GP, we never used the mass add feature. We'd create one on the fly. The problem was that we'd fall behind too. Don't be too hard on the guys in the back, they're probably overworked.

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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[barbola]

Unfortunately the "guys" have a new manager and he wants me to come up with something for them. I just printed off the 342 page inventory manual and will see what I can find.

They want to know how the min/max and reorder levels and all that stuff works so I have to learn it and come up with a process for them.

For the stock count, maybe I can do something with integration manager?

 

[jazgeek]

when I originally went through the mass-add process I started to play around with modifying the next count date, basically manipulating that date to populate the count sheet. Perhaps an ABC counting method might work better for you?



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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[barbola]

ABC would work only if I can go A thru ZZZ. I'll take that light reading home this weekend.

I was thinking if the guys have all their items in an Excel sheet, and have the aisle/bin number in a column, they can assign count dates and I'll import those into GP using integration manager so they can set up their stock count? Maybe? But maybe ABC will work!

thanks.

 

[jazgeek]

not sure if integration manager has stock counts? been a while.

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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[YoNeck]

The Cycle Count process in Great Plains doesn't work for us either. It is very basic and doesn't allow for the many different scenarios that come up in every day business.

We use an MS Access database to create count sheets.
An ABC code is used in GP and a counter in Acess to loop through the 'A' items more often than B,C,D items.

The user simply asks for a count sheet and Access prints the count sheets and another report showing various allocations throughout the warehouse.

 

[barbola]

I was able to find a way to ease their counting. I set up a new stock calendar with Friday as the only Up day. Some of their items (used Generic Desc) are counted twice a year so I ran the stock count schedule for those with 27 as the interval. Then I ran it again using 13 as the intervals for the remaining items so they get counted 4 times a year and so far they have been keeping up.

I used an ABC code for the 6-month items.

thanks.