Counting several warehouses at one cut-off time

A typical trading firm keeps goods in several places at once: a unit in a Tashkent market hall, a main warehouse on the edge of the city, and a third-party store that takes the overflow. If each site is counted on its own day, the same pallet can be counted twice or not at all, because goods keep moving between the sites. The fix is not to count faster. It is to agree on one cut-off time that every site counts against.

What a cut-off time actually is

A cut-off is a specific date and hour, for example 18:00 on a Thursday. Every document stamped before that moment belongs to the "before" stock, and every document after it is recorded separately and added to the result later. The count itself may run through the night. What matters is that every number answers the same question: what did we hold at 18:00?

Without it you hear phrases such as "we stopped around the evening" or "that truck left just before we started". Nobody can prove either, and every gap turns into an argument.

Choosing the moment

Pick a time when movement is lowest, usually just after the last dispatch of the day or before the first receipts of the next. Check three things before you fix it:

1. When does each site normally finish dispatching, and when do trucks arrive?
2. Will the finance team close or export the books at that hour?
3. Can every site have its people and devices ready at the same moment?

If one site cannot stop at 18:00, do not give it a different time. Keep the shared cut-off and let that site use a movement log, so goods that leave or arrive afterwards are written down separately.

If you want the count to line up with the finance month-end, choose the close of the last working day of the month. Warn customers and suppliers a week ahead, and keep clear of the end-of-month dispatch peak.

Rules for documents near the cut-off

The most heated discussions are about paperwork. Write the rules down before the count and have every site lead sign them:

• A dispatch note issued and signed before the cut-off, with the goods already out of the gate, is "before".
• Goods picked but still on the loading bay are still stock and are counted as a separate "loading" zone.
• A transfer note issued before the cut-off, with goods not yet received at the other site, goes on an "in transit" list.
• Receipts after the cut-off are recorded separately and are not added to the count.
• No document may be entered with an earlier date once the count has started.

The rules do not need to be elaborate. They only need to make everyone give the same answer to the same situation.

An example with transfers

Suppose the cut-off is 18:00. At 17:30 the main warehouse dispatches 60 cartons of SKU B-0412 to the market unit, and the transfer is posted in the books straight away, so the market unit's book balance already includes them. The truck only arrives at 20:00.

The market unit counts at 18:30, does not find the cartons and reports 60 short. The main warehouse, which has already booked them out, shows no gap. Add an "in transit" line (60 cartons dispatched at 17:30, due at the market unit) and the apparent shortage is explained. When the truck arrives, the cartons are checked in against that line instead of being chased as a loss.

Who keeps the list

Appoint one coordinator who holds the list of documents around the cut-off for all sites. Each site lead calls in at the start, around the halfway point and at the end of counting. The coordinator keeps a simple status sheet with one row per site: start time, expected finish, bins completed and open documents, so a site that is falling behind is visible at a glance. Disputed documents go to the coordinator, not to whoever is nearest.

In short

One cut-off time, a written rule for documents and one person who holds the list: with those three things several warehouses can be counted in parallel and merged into a single table without double counting. InventoryHub schedules multi-warehouse counts around one shared cut-off, runs several teams at once and merges the scan records by SKU.