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Using Cycle Counts to Audit Parts Inventory

Learn How to Set Up Cycle Counts to Keep Your Inventory Up to Date

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Overview

Cycle counting makes it easy for you to audit your inventory and ensure the quantity of parts in Limble is accurate. Set up cycle counts to validate your inventory by picking how often and how many parts you want to validate at a time.

Cycle counts give you a structure to quickly and easily audit your inventory to ensure you always have the right parts for your technicians when they are needed.

This article will walk you through how to configure, complete, and report on cycle counts.

Table of Contents

Set Up and Configure Cycle Counts

Complete a Cycle Count

View and Report Changes in Inventory

Watch the Video Tutorial

Set Up and Configure Cycle Counts

Navigate to the Manage Parts page and click on the two gears icon (Cycle Counts) > Configure.


The Configure Cycle Counts pop-up allows you to set:

  1. The cycle count schedule.

  2. How many parts you want to count at a time.

  3. Who the cycle count should be assigned to.

  4. Which parts you want to be included in the cycle count.

Select values for the following fields to configure your cycle counts.

Field

Description

Setup Schedule

Select how often and when you want the cycle count to trigger. When it triggers, it will create new tasks in Limble prompting your team to check inventory levels.

  • Click the Pencil icon to edit or the Add Cycle Count Schedule button to add a schedule for a new count.


    Enter or edit values for the following options.
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    • Daily

    • Weekly

    • Monthly

    • Yearly
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  • Note: For each of these options, you can specify how often you want to run the task and a time to complete it. To delete a specified time, click X.

or

  • Click the calendar icon to specify or change the date for the task to start.

Configure Tasks

Configure the tasks:

  • Enter values for the following:

    • How many parts do you want to count at a time?
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    • Broken up in parts < > per task.
      For example, a value of 100 parts broken into 25 parts per task, generates 4 tasks with 25 parts.
      ​

    • Note: You can add a maximum of 500 parts on a single task.

  • Assigned To: Select a role to assign the tasks to when created.

Advanced Settings
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If needed, click the gear icon to make the following additional selections:

  • Include/Exclude: Choose the option to include or exclude parts.
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  • Field: Select a Field for Parts that you want to filter by.
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  • Value: Enter in a value for the Field selected.
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    • Note: For this filter setting option, all parts have to meet the selected criteria. For instance, you can not have two filters with the same field and different values. For example: Include parts that have Part Location with a Value of Warehouse 1 and Parts that have Part Location with a Value of Warehouse 2. If you need to do this, create two separate Cycle Count Schedules for each Warehouse.

When you're finished, click Close. The cycle counts will generate based on the schedule and criteria you selected.
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Enable Blind Cycle Counts

A blind cycle count hides current inventory quantities to reduce bias while conducting a cycle count.
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To enable blind cycle counts across your locations, a Super User must navigate to Settings > Configuration > Parts Settings. Click the Enable blind cycle counts toggle to turn it on.

Complete a Cycle Count

Once a cycle count task is generated, open the task to begin the inventory counting process. (Note: parts included in a cycle count are ordered by the location field.)
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  1. Open the task to start the cycle count.

  2. Enter quantities for each of the selected parts.

  3. Click Complete. Once the cycle count is completed, it updates the inventory to reflect the quantities entered.
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    ​Note: There are two important notes about cycle counts while there is an open task.

  • If units get used: The cycle count task always shows the correct number of parts and updates that number in real-time. That means that if a cycle count for part A starts with a quantity of 10 units, and when a technician takes 2 units (while the task is open), the cycle count for part A will show the updated quantity of 8 units.

  • If more units are received: In the rare case that more inventory is received during a cycle count, the received inventory might get overwritten. For example, you may see that part A has a quantity of 8 units and enter that information. At the same time at the other end of the warehouse, a coworker may receive 10 more of part A (which would now add up for a quantity of 18). However, Limble will always consider the manually entered cycle count (in this case, 8) to be the correct “truth”.

View and Report Changes in Inventory

There are multiple ways you can view and report the changes to your inventory. You can view cycle count tasks, view a specific part log to see any manual adjustments that were the result of a cycle count, and download an Excel report showing the variances in your inventory after a cycle count.
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View Cycle Counts

  • Navigate to the Manage Parts page and click the two gears icon (Cycle Counts) > View to view the list of the recently added cycle count tasks.
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  • View manual adjustments from cycle counts by opening a part card and clicking on the Log tab. Limble lists the adjusted part quantities with dates and details.

Report on Inventory Variances

You can download a spreadsheet that reports variances in your inventory after a cycle count.

  1. From the Manage Parts page, click the two gears icon (Cycle Counts) > View.

  2. On your most recent cycle count task, under the Actions column, click the download icon.

  3. An Excel spreadsheet will download, which shows the difference in inventory before and after the cycle count.

  4. You can also download the same report from the completed cycle count task, by clicking "Download Report" at the bottom of the completed task.

Watch the Video Tutorial

Related Articles

Using Part Logs in Limble

Still don’t see what you’re looking for? Check out our YouTube channel for more tips and tricks! You can also reach out to us anytime at support@limblecmms.com.

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