Counting while the store is open
Customers do not stop shopping because staff are counting. Stock Count is built for that: a count can be carried out during opening hours, over several hours, and still come out right — because every counted quantity carries the time it was counted, and the stock is corrected as of that time rather than as of the moment the count is submitted.
It comes out right in all but a few narrow situations. This page explains the mechanism, the situations where it cannot know the truth, and the simple practices that keep the resulting deviation small.
The count time
Every count line is stamped with the time it is registered in Stock Count — normally a moment after it is entered in the app. The handset's own clock is not used, so a device with the wrong time cannot shift a count.
The stock does not change while counting. Counted quantities stay inside Stock Count until the count is submitted, which may be hours later. Only then does Stock Transaction Processing (STP) correct the stock — and it does so as of the count time:
new stock = counted quantity + every movement dated after the count time
The shelf was counted at 14:00 and held 10.
- The sale at 13:30 happened before the shelf was counted. The 10 on the shelf already reflects it, so it is ignored.
- The sale at 15:00 happened after. The shelf held 10 and one has left since, so the stock is 10 − 1 = 9.
- That the count was submitted at 17:00 makes no difference. The result is the same whether it is submitted five minutes after the count or the next morning.
"Every movement" means every change to sellable stock — sales and returns, deliveries, transfers, stock corrections — not only sales.
Items that nobody counted and that are set to 0 are dated when that happens: when their category is marked as done, or otherwise when the count is submitted.
A movement that arrives late
Sometimes a sale reaches STP later than it happened — a till that was offline, for instance — and only after the count has been applied. If the sale happened before the item was counted, it is already reflected in the counted quantity, so it must not reduce the stock again. STP recognises this from the sale's own date and books it together with a compensating correction, so the counted result stands. The same holds for a delivery, a correction or a transfer that is dated before the count but registered after it. See Delayed transactions.
One item, several locations: the first count sets the time
An item is often in more than one place — two shelves, an end-of-aisle display, the back room. Staff count each location separately, and Stock Count adds them up. But one item gets one count time: the time of its first registered line, wherever that was.
Here the item is counted as 40, as of 14:00. Every movement after 14:00 is applied on top — including a sale at 16:00 from the back room, and including a sale at 14:05 from shelf B, which at that point had not been counted yet.
The time is per item. An item that is kept only in the back room gets its own time when the back room is counted, whatever time the shop floor was counted.
If count lines carry batch or serial numbers, each batch or serial number of an item is added up and dated in the same way, on its own.
Where a deviation can arise
Dating the whole item at its first location is what makes the arithmetic possible — and it is also where the uncertainty comes from. Between an item's first and last location, the system cannot know which location a movement touched.
A sale between two locations
Shelf A is counted at 14:00 (10), a customer buys one at 14:05, and shelf B is counted at 14:10 (10). The item is counted as 20 as of 14:00, and the 14:05 sale is subtracted.
| The customer took it from | Really on the shelves | Stock after the count |
|---|---|---|
| shelf A — already counted | 19 | 19 ✅ |
| shelf B — not yet counted | 20 | 19 ❌ one short |
Nobody can tell which shelf the customer took it from, so every sale after the first location is subtracted. The deviation is bounded by the sales of that item in the window between its first and last location — so the shorter that window, the smaller the risk.
Taken before the count, paid for after
A customer takes one from the shelf at 13:55. The shelf is counted at 14:00 and holds 9. The customer pays at 14:05. The sale is dated after the count, so it is subtracted — but the item had already left the shelf before the count.
| Really on the shelf | Stock after the count | |
|---|---|---|
| after the count is submitted | 9 | 8 ❌ one short |
This is rare, it is small, and no system can see it: the receipt is the only record, and it carries the time of payment.
The back room, counted later
The back room does not have to be counted at the same time as the shop floor. It can be counted hours later — as long as nothing moves in or out of it until it has been counted.
The shelf is counted at 14:00 and the back room at 17:00, so the item is dated 14:00. What happens in the back room in between is invisible to the count:
| Between 14:00 and 17:00 | Really there | Stock after the count |
|---|---|---|
| 5 carried from the back room (20) to the already-counted shelf | 30 | 25 ❌ five counted nowhere |
| a delivery of 12 put in the back room, and registered | 42 | 54 ❌ twelve counted twice |
In the first case the five had left the back room before it was counted and joined the shelf after it was counted — neither count saw them, and moving goods within a store is not a stock movement, so nothing corrects it. In the second, the delivery is registered after the item's count time, so STP adds it — and then the back-room count at 17:00 includes the same boxes.
Rules for counting while the store is open
- Count every location of an item close together. The shorter the time between an item's first and last location, the fewer movements fall into the uncertain window.
- Count the shop floor first, and fast. That is where customers are taking things.
- Freeze every area that has not been counted yet — typically the back room. No refills out of it, no deliveries into it, until it has been counted.
- Register deliveries that have already arrived before counting starts. A delivery that is counted and registered afterwards is counted twice — see Stock can go negative — and it must.
- For zero deviation, count with the doors closed — before opening or after closing.
Counting while the store is open is supported. The price is a small, bounded deviation, and these rules keep it small.
Read next
- How a count works — the steps from planning to the stock correction
- Types of count — which items become 0 when nobody counted them
- Stock ownership — what an external system must do to apply a count correctly