Inventory taking – sample-type inventory for companies with open merchandise information systems

Companies in Germany have been legally permitted to rationalize total inventory taking by sampling as early as 1977. Needless to say this also applies for stocktaking in retail establishments.

As far as inventory taking is concerned, INFORM offers a special version of INVENT for branch organizations that have merchandise information systems without inventory updating. INVENT complies with the legal regulations stated in §241 of the German Handelsgesetzbuch (German Commercial Code) and with the HFA-statement 1/1990 of the IDW.

Advantages of sample-type inventory

• Reducing the time for stocktaking by half
• Reducing inventory costs
• Reducing or eliminating closing times for inventory taking
• Reducing manpower requirements

Temporal aspect of inventory
Using INVENT does not affect the temporal aspect of stocktaking. It is still possible to take inventory ahead of time or to postpone it within the legally permitted time frame. Stocktaking during shop hours is also possible.

Approach
As usual, the assortment of goods is fully counted per department; the sample size is given as a registration interval. An interval of 20, for instance, indicates that only the selling price of every twentieth piece will be written down.

In comparison with conventional inventory taking, the effort for inventory taking will be clearly reduced with INVENT. In practice, this will save 40 to 70% of the time needed for stocktaking, depending on the department and/or the assortment of goods.

Based on the inventory data of the previous year, INFORM will set the intervals for counting and the full census limits per branch office and department to default values.

Full census limits
The full census limit is a price ceiling. Pieces that have a price which lie above the ceiling price must not be taken into the sample.

Depending on the assortments of goods that have to be taken, items having a selling price above the full census limit have to be taken the conventional way in full inventory count. The given full census limits depend on the groups that have to be established. However, they are planned in such a way that only very few or clearly distinguishable items with a high purchase price will be affected.

Counting intervals
The data of the last conventional inventory taking serves as a basis of calculation. What is needed are the values for quantity, selling price and, if need be, the commodity group or department per item.

Based hereon, mathematical operations will help to calculate the necessary intervals per commodity group, department or branch office – depending on the required result.

During this planning process, data records with alternative full census limits will be calculated simultaneously. The result is a proposal of different full census limits and the respective counting intervals for each commodity group, for instance.

OCR – document reading
Alongside the evaluation of inventory data with INVENT, INFORM offers the service of inventory records registration with total in-house processing.

Sample-type inventory data can be recorded either with MDE devices or via OCR inventory records. The inventory records are digitalized by in-house document readers and the data is recorded for further document reading.

After the inventory data has been verified logically and questions have been clarified, INFORM will conduct the extrapolation.

Do you have any questions or want to know more about inventory taking with INVENT?
Please don't hesitate to contact us!