ShipHero's cycle count feature allows you to create custom cycles based on your business needs. Cycles are lists of SKUs or locations that you would like counted. For more detailed inforameation visit our artilcle What is Cycle Counting?
ShipHero provides 3 cycle count options
- Count by Locations
- Count by Items
- Count Items Flagged for Recount
NOTE: While performing cycle counts, the location becomes unpickable until the cycle count has been completed.
How to Choose a Cycle Type
Each of the 3 cycle types has specific pros and cons to consider.
Count by Locations
Advantages:
- Used for confirming the accuracy of a location.
- Great for catching items that should not be in a location.
- You can sort by location type (bins, pallets, etc.).
- You can sort by location prefix.
- If you find an unexpected SKU in the location, you can scan it in and add it
Disadvantages:
- Must count all items in the location, not just specific SKUs.
- Unable to sort by a particular customer because 1 area may have SKUs for multiple customers.
Count by Items
Advantages:
- Very flexible! Used for counting a specific SKU.
- Great for counting SKU for a particular customer.
- Can Tag SKU and then count by tag.
- Allows you to tag all products that you want to be counted every month (high selling), every quarter (medium), or yearly (slow sellers), then make a cycle based on the tag (similar to ABC counting).
Disadvantages:
- When sent to a location, you only count the assigned SKU, not the entire location.
- Will not identify if the bin as a whole is accurate; only cares about the SKUs in that cycle.
- If an SKU is in a location it is not assigned to, this type of count will not catch it - you will need a location cycle count.
- Item cycle counts will only send the counter to all locations assigned to that SKU
Count by Items Flagged for Recount
Advantages:
- Very focused, only counts SKUs that need a recount.
- Can assign a manager or experienced user to count these SKUs.
- Counts need 2 consecutive counts with the same discrepancy before updating on hand in that bin.
Disadvantages:
- Similar to an SKU Count; only counts SKUs that are a part of this cycle, not the entire location.
- Will not identify if the bin as a whole is accurate.