Audits

[DrFaroohk]

We have an inventory done once a month by some outside team, I imagine its just like everywhere else. They come in, rip the store apart and count everything and add it up and compare it to what we SHOULD have.

So we're always severely short. While I realize there are security holes we need to patch...am I the only person who believes it entirely likely that these guys fudge our counts? Think about it - they only have a job as long as we have inventory problems. If we always have perfect audits, they are no longer needed. Or is I just paranoid?

[Gurndigarn]

So we're always severely short. While I realize there are security holes we need to patch...am I the only person who believes it entirely likely that these guys fudge our counts?

From the times when I've done inventory... you may have people who agree with you, but I'm not one of them.

Think about it - they only have a job as long as we have inventory problems. If we always have perfect audits, they are no longer needed. Or is I just paranoid?

Yeah, you're paranoid. Inventory is for several things, including taxation. Besides, the auditors are more likely to be fired for turning in fudged results than for having close or near-close to perfect results.

And if they ever turned in an audit that showed no discrepancies— no stock that vanished or mysteriously appeared— you would have a second audit almost immediatly, with a different company doing it, because that's damn near impossible to happen in a retail environment.

[Rapscallion]

If you suspect them, you could easily count a particular product in location etc just before or after they do their count and compare figures.

Rapscallion

[Banrion]

Are these people directly employed by your company, or does your company contract with an outside vendor for the inventory teams? There are several companies around here where all they do is inventory different places. They have nothing to gain by fudging the numbers in either direction. If a company got an inventory that was way off, and went back and counted themselves, that company would not hire the inventory company for audits anymore.

[DrFaroohk]

Fair enough. It was a thought, and perhaps it could be true on occasion. I shall stop being so suspicious of the audit crew.

[Imogene]

count a particular product in location etc

That's basically what we did at Chesterfield. We'd cut the sections up into smaller sections, and have the inventory team write their counts on a little sheet of paper in the section they counted. And then we store workers would go around and double check their counts. No one left until all the counts were matched up perfectly.

[crazylegs]

At my first job we also had an outside team that came in and stock checked, however they were payed a set amount but once they had finished they got to leave, so...

Anyhow we always worked out that they counted wrong, terribly wrong but being the size of the store that it was there was no way of rechecking everything intime for the cut off so we always had a huge stock hit, when i was last there it ended up at a loss of over £1000/day. Seriously.

[Primer]

Once, about 30 years ago, I did a temp inventory job for Penney's. The teams went in at 9pm when the store closed, and left when done, or 6am, whichever came first. I was involved with counting records (Vinyl LPs). We were told to count by the price tag, not by the title. Frequently the same title would have 3 or 4 different prices marked on different copies. I think I'm the only one that followed directions. On the recounts, every batched I checked was incorrect. I worked only one night. I could not have handled a second.