For a large portion of retailers, this time of year means one thing, inventory. I personally hate this time of year. I’m getting a little older and I just can’t hang with overnight shifts. It doesn’t make it any better that my bosses what us (RLPMs) to attend as many inventories as our schedules allow… I’ve done three this month so far and my sleep schedule still isn’t back to normal. With all that inventory on my brain, I thought I’d share some best practices for my peers out there.

First, let me say that my company doesn’t contract any third party to conduct our physical count. We do it ourselves. While there are some great companies out there who service some of the world’s leading retailers, we’ve found that our inventory management is much better when left to the people who it matters most to.

Second, we take the majority of our store inventories overnight during September-October as opposed to the end of the 4^th quarter in the January time frame. We do this because for several reasons. One, our stores are slower in regard to foot traffic right now. Second, we are light on inventory as we gear up for the holiday. Lastly, we want to catch all those “out of stocks” that we have through the store prior to the big rush. This allows to be in a far better stock position going into the holiday shopping season. You can’t sell pegboard, right?

In my years of supporting the inventory process, I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t and what is just a waste of time. Here are just a few of my inventory best practices:

Count overnight – No customers. That’ all that needs to be said ☺

Apparel – Key here is making sure that all garments have a barcode. Missing tags can really hold up a count for hours. Starting about 1 week out from inventory, begin assigning key associates to go rack, to rack, to rack looking for missing tags and replacing as they find them. We use a sticker on each rack with the associates initial once it has been cleaned up. This gives us accuracy and some level of accountability.

Footwear – if you sell footwear, you have mismates. Now is the time to purge them.

Hiding spots – As a manager, you are fully aware of all the hiding spots in your store. Find them, as well as all the merchandise hidden within. Think warehouse racks, offices, storage cabinets, and basedecks.

Basedecks – I’m going to give them their own bullet point here. A basedeck is the bottom shelf on a gondola. They can be lifted up and merchandise can be hidden under them. I make it a point to lift up every single basedeck in the store prior to inventory. I always find thousands of dollars of merchandise.

Gift cards — if these are replenished like any other product, make it easy on yourself and pre-count them. You don’t want to be stuck scanning/counting 10,000 gift cards on inventory night.

Warehouses/storage containers – Pre-count these the day before your inventory. This will again save plenty of time during the night.

Top-stock/Risers – either pre-count your back-stock ahead of time, or assign one or two people to count this during inventory night. I’ve always had success with a “top-stock team”.

Single Scan areas Vs. Multi Scan areas – To this day, I have managers make some pretty bad decisions on area tickets. Yes, Single scan takes a bit longer (since you have to scan each item), but your accuracy will be far greater. Obviously, your single scans will be in your soft lines (shoes, clothes) but they can have a benefit in hardline areas as well. Areas such as ammunition, fishing poles, sleeping bags and tents, and any other area where an associate may get confused (or lazy) with multiple colors and sizes.

Have a team in place as well as a plan – What area will be the most difficult? Once you figure that out, start there. The rest of the night will be a cake walk.

Warehouse shipments — make sure to suspend any warehouse shipments a day before your count. Additionally, if you do get a truck before your inventory, make certain it is not received in until after your count. If not, you could potentially see a significant loss on paper due to all that missed product sitting in the loading dock.

Use DNI markers on all that product you pre-counted. This will ensure that your counters won’t count the same product twice.

While this list is far from being all inclusive, it does give you a baseline for what you should be looking for. Often times, we get caught up in making sure our shrink isn’t too high, we forget that accuracy is as just important. For example: if you have 200 lawn chairs, but there are 5 different colors, (red, blue, yellow, green and black). Each of these chairs has its own sku, but they are all $5. If an employee scans and counts all 200 under only one sku, you will have no shrink, but your inventory counts will still be off. Your books will show 200 red chair and zero of the 4 other colors. Most likely, you’re now going to be overstocked on the additional colors. Proper inventory management starts with an accurate inventory count.