Counting an aisle before the doors open

A full physical count once a year tells you what was true in January. Twenty minutes a morning tells you what is true today.

Sam Prewitt Head of customer setup Jul 22, 2026 5 min read

An empty hardware store aisle at dawn, the lights on and the sun low in the storefront

The annual count is a ritual, and like most rituals it survives because nobody has asked what it is for. It shuts the store, it takes a weekend, it needs eight people, and the number it produces starts going stale the moment the doors open.

The alternative is boring, which is the point

Cycle counting means counting a small part of the store often enough that the whole store gets counted a few times a year, without ever closing.

One aisle, or one section of one aisle, each morning before opening.
Fast movers more often than slow ones — four times a year against once.
Twenty minutes, one person, a phone.

What to do with a variance

A count that disagrees with the system is information, not an error to be stamped out. Anything off by more than five percent should wait in a review list rather than going straight into the numbers, because the most common cause is a miscount and the second most common is a duplicate line in the catalog.

Real shrink is the third. Finding it in a week beats finding it next January.

A number you trust on Tuesday morning is worth more than a perfect number in a binder.

Stores that count this way usually have the whole floor in the system within two to three weeks of starting, and never shut for a weekend again.