It is important to have an accurate assessment of your inventory so you know what’s in stock. That’s why Artisan has a “Physical Inventory Count” feature to help reconcile your items.
Before You Begin
When deciding to do a physical inventory, we strongly recommend setting aside a day (ideally a day that you are closed, so you don’t have to deal with sales affecting inventory), and counting all your inventory on that day.
However, we understand you might want to go through your inventory in batches–perhaps only by category or if you’re checking a specific vendor.
Counting in Batches
Head to the inventory counts screen by going to “Inventory” and “Physical Inventory Counts.”
Artisan will show you a list of your inventory.
In this example, we’re going to count in batches by using different categories.
First, we’ll need to filter our inventory list. There are a few ways to do so, like going into the “Power Search” and applying fields, but the easiest is to click on “Start New Search.”
This shows all of our saved searches that we can use to narrow down our inventory list. We’ll select “Category.”
Select the category that you want to count first.
Start counting your items by one of the following methods:
Press ‘Enter’ to Change Count
We recommend using tally sheets or scanning for accurate counts. However, if you do know the number of items and just want to quickly enter them here, you can do so. Select the item on the “Inventory Counts” screen and press enter. Enter the number.
Print Tally Sheets
Tally sheets make it easier to keep track of your counts as you go along. As you count your items, make note of the tally on the sheet, then write that number in the “count” section. When you’re ready, select each item on the “Inventory Counts” screen and enter the counts.
Scan Mode
The most efficient way to count your inventory. Scan mode lets you scan item barcodes around the store via your regular barcode scanner or a portable data terminal. Pressing “Scan Mode” takes you to the scanning screen, where you can either a) start scanning your items or b) upload your scans if you already scanned them on your portable data terminal – “Load Scans from Device.”
Once you start entering your counts, Artisan will make note of your progress.
We have finished counting this group (ex. the “T-Shirts” category). We’ll accept the counts for these items by clicking on the “Accept Counts” button or pressing F10 on our keyboard.
Artisan is going to take these counts, and they will be reflected in the items’ quantity on hand. If there were any adjustments made (an increase or decrease of a quantity) they will be recorded as “Inventory Adjustments” like “Shrinkage” or “Corrections“). Artisan will ask how you want to proceed.
If you want to accept counts only for the items you pulled up in your search (ex. our “T-Shirts” category we just counted), select “Include Only (Counted) Items Matching Your Search.”
Artisan will then ask this again – reminding you that any other physical counts not shown in this search will not be included and will be marked as pending counts.
Proceed to the next batch (ex. by category, vendor, etc.). In this example, we’ve filtered our counts by another category, “Gift.” When we’re finished with this batch, we’ll accept those counts.
Once we’re finished with that batch, we can keep moving on to the next one, and so on. If we’re finished counting for the day, we will need to zero out any items within our batch that have not yet been counted. For example, we started counting in this batch, but we have to stop (ex. needing to close the store for the day).
Click on “Zero Uncounted Items” or press Ctrl Z on your keyboard.
Artisan will ask how you want to handle zeroing out items. Choose the default option – “Include Only (Uncounted) Items Matching Your Search.”
