The full annual stock take exists because it is how it has always been done. It is disruptive, it is expensive in overtime, and the number it produces is accurate for exactly one day a year.
Count a slice, often
Cycle counting splits the catalogue and counts a slice each week. Nobody closes the warehouse, and a discrepancy surfaces within days of appearing rather than eleven months later.
A workable split
- Fast movers — monthly. They generate most of the error.
- High value — quarterly, regardless of movement.
- Everything else — annually, a slice at a time.
The point is not the schedule. It is that a variance found in March is still investigable; the same variance found in December is just a write-off.