Inventory Count Overview

Looking for the step-by-step for your annual count? See Taking a Physical Inventory. This article is the mechanics underneath it.

An inventory count session is a structured stocktake. It takes a snapshot of what the system believes is on the shelf, lets you enter what you actually find, and then reports the difference — variance — for someone with authority to review and post.

Counting runs from a workstation with a scanner. It is deliberately not on the phone.

The four states

A session moves in one direction, and each move is a button you press.

1. Draft — the session exists but nothing is frozen yet. You can still delete it (draft is the only state that can be deleted), and you can print a count sheet to preview the scope.
2. In Progress — pressing Start Count takes the snapshot and opens entry.
3. Pending Review — pressing Close for Review computes the variances.
4. Closed — pressing Close Session finalizes it. Every variance must be resolved first.

You can send a session back from Pending Review to In Progress with Reopen for Counting — useful when the review turns up a shelf somebody forgot to walk. Closing for review again keeps the review you have done: a posted adjustment stays posted and is never offered a second time, and an accepted line stays accepted as long as the recount found the same thing. If more scanning changed a line (the missing piece turned up), that line comes back undecided.

Fixing an item’s history during review

Every Stock ID in the review opens that item. Fix what’s wrong there (record the sale that was missed, the memo return, the purchase), then close the item: you come back to the review, it recalculates on its own, and you land back on the row you left. Recalculate in the header does the same for the whole count.

The expected figure is always what the books say now, minus what moved since the count started. So a fix dated before the count corrects the starting figure, and a fix dated during the count shows as movement that explains the variance. Posted rows are never recalculated, and accepted rows keep their decision unless the numbers change.

The list shows every count session in your shop, whoever started it. Quantity Reconciliation keeps its own audit record of every settlement it makes, and those records do not appear here — they are not counts.

Counting with more than one person

One count, one session. When two or three people count the store together, one person creates and starts the session, and everyone else opens that same session from the Inventory Count list on their own computer and scans into it. Entries from everyone land in the one count at the same time, and each entry shows who counted it.

• Split the store up however you like, by case, tray or type. Nothing needs to be assigned in JewelTrak.
• If someone scans a piece another person already counted, JewelTrak says who counted it and when, and asks whether to add to it (a second identical piece) or discard (the same piece again).

⛔ Don’t start a separate session for each person. Every session is compared against the whole snapshot, so in your session, every piece your coworker counted looks Not Counted. Posting those as adjustments would set stock you have in the case to zero.

What the snapshot is

Start Count writes one row per in-scope item recording its quantity on hand, its carat weight (stones), its location and its description at that instant. That baseline is what the count is measured against — not the live quantity. Everything is written in a single transaction, so a session either opens with a complete baseline or does not open at all.

Scope is decided by the inventory types ticked when the session was created — any combination of jewelry, watches, diamonds, colored stones and pearls — and, optionally, a location. Only items with something on the shelf are included:

• jewelry and watches: quantity on hand greater than zero
• stones: stone count greater than zero or carat weight greater than zero, so melee and parcels whose real holding is carats are not skipped

A piece that is entirely out on memo has no quantity on hand, so it is not in scope — correct, because it is not on your shelf to be found.

Where a session covers several types, every entry and every variance row names its own type, and a Stock ID that exists in two of them is a question the entry screen asks rather than a guess it makes.

Entering the count

Scan or type the Stock ID, set the quantity (stones also take carats), and add it. The screen resolves which inventory type the id belongs to and shows it back to you. You can mark an item Not Found, which records a zero rather than a silent absence, and you can Remove any entry while the session is in progress.

Every counted row carries the item’s photo, so you can match what is in your hand to the line without reading stock numbers. A loose stone with no photograph shows a shape icon instead.

If the item has already been counted in this session, JewelTrak asks what you mean:

• Add to it — the two counts are summed. This is the right answer when two trays of the same parcel are counted separately, or when two identical rings come up one after the other.
• Already counted — discard — nothing changes. This is the right answer when you have lost your place and re-entered the same piece.

It never decides for you. Counting a piece twice used to add a second row silently, which reported quantities the shop does not have and sent a variance to review that was never real.

The Stock ID box only accepts as many digits as the longest Stock ID in your shop, so a second number cannot end up typed onto the end of the first.

A progress bar shows how many of the pieces in the snapshot have been found so far. A piece entered twice counts once, and a piece that wasn’t on the books doesn’t count toward it.

What happens when stock moves during the count — the important part

Nothing is automatically adjusted, and nothing you have already counted is rewritten. A week-long count is safe. Here is exactly what happens:

• The snapshot never changes. Sales, memos and receipts during the count do not move the baseline.
• Your entries never change. What you counted on Tuesday still reads what you counted on Tuesday.
• Live quantities on hand do change normally — invoicing, memoing and receiving all behave as usual. A count does not lock inventory, and nothing in JewelTrak stops a sale because a count is open.
• At the moment you enter an item, if its live quantity no longer matches the snapshot, the entry screen tells you so on the spot: “This item’s QOH changed since count started.” The entry is still recorded. It is a heads-up, not a block.
• At Close for Review, JewelTrak adds up everything that actually moved each in-scope item since the count started — sales, memos going out, memo returns — and compares that movement against the variance. A variance that matches its movement exactly is labeled Movement Explained.

So the answer to “do transactions during the week update my counted items?” is no — they are reconciled at review time instead, and the review screen tells you which differences were caused by ordinary business rather than by missing goods.

Items added after the count started

A piece created after Start Count isn’t in the snapshot, so the count isn’t measuring it. You don’t have to count it before closing. If you leave it uncounted, it never appears in the review and posting never touches it.

If you do scan it, JewelTrak compares your count with what the books say for that piece. A match produces no variance. A difference shows up for review like any other piece.

Reading the review screen

Four numbers across the top: total entries, True Variances, Movement Explained, and Resolved. Each variance row shows the item’s photo, Expected at Start, Counted, the difference, the carat columns for a stone session, and the net movement during the count. Rows are listed in Stock ID order, so you can work down the list alongside your trays.

There are four kinds of variance:

Type	Meaning
short	Counted less than expected
over	Counted more than expected
not_counted	In the snapshot, never entered
not_on_system	Entered, but not on the books at all: something on your shelf the system has no record of

And two things you can do with one:

• Accept — “I have looked at this and it needs no correction.” Accept changes no stock. For anything labeled Movement Explained this is the right answer, and Accept All Explained does the whole group in one press.
• Post Adjustment — this writes stock, setting the quantity on hand (and, for a stone, the carat weight) to what you counted, adjusted for anything that sold, went out on memo, or came back from memo after you counted it. It requires a reason code: Theft / Loss, Data Entry Error, Received Not Entered, Memo Not Recorded, Found, or Other. Posting is a separate permission — Post Inventory Count Adjustments — that no role is granted by default, precisely because this is the moment shrinkage gets absorbed.

A variance can only be posted once, and a posted variance can no longer be accepted.

A piece that is out on memo

If you count a piece the system shows as out on memo to a customer, its row says Out on memo with the memo number and date. Either the piece came back and the return was never recorded, or a tag was scanned by mistake. Check the piece first.

If it really is back, click Return on memo → and record the return on that memo. That puts the piece back in stock and takes it off the customer’s memo in one step. You can’t post an adjustment for it from the count, because that would put the piece in stock while the memo still shows it at the customer, so it would be counted twice. If it was a mis-scan, Accept it; that changes nothing.

Sales after you counted are taken into account. Say the books show 10 of a band, you count 9, and then 3 more sell before anyone posts. Posting the shortage sets stock to 6, not 9: the 9 you counted, less the 3 sold since. JewelTrak tells before from after by when each invoice, memo or memo return was entered, compared with when that piece was counted.

⚠️ Post promptly, and do not post a variance the movement engine explained. One case it can’t see: a sale made before you counted the piece but entered afterward looks like it happened after, so posting would take it off twice. Enter sales as they happen during a count, and Accept anything labeled Movement Explained instead of posting it.

Once no variance is left pending, Close Session finalizes. If the session came from a cycle count schedule, closing also rolls that schedule’s next due date forward.

Count sheets

From any session that is not closed:

• Blind Sheet — Stock ID, description, location, and an empty column. The counter has no idea what is expected, which is the honest way to count.
• Tagged Sheet — the same, with the expected quantity already printed. Faster to reconcile; it trusts the counter.

On a draft session the sheet is generated live, so it doubles as a preview of what the session will cover.

Once the count is in review, Print Review prints the review itself: every variance in Stock ID order, with its photo, expected and counted figures, status (including any memo the piece is out on), and a blank Checked column to tick as you work the trays.

It prints exactly what the review screen is showing. Above the variance list, Pending only hides everything already accepted or posted, and All brings them back. If you’ve also typed in Search Stock ID, only those Stock IDs print. A filtered printout says so in its heading (for example “Count Review (Pending Only)” and “Pending only: 12 of 40 variances”), so it can’t be mistaken for the full review.

Several people on one count

Any number of people can count the same session at once. When any one of them presses Close for Review, the count closes for everyone. Each counter’s screen switches to the review within about 20 seconds, or as soon as they try to scan, and the review names who closed it and when. From there everyone reviews the same list. Screens don’t update live, so another reviewer’s decisions show up when your page refreshes, which happens after each of your own actions. Reopen for Counting works the same way in reverse: it reopens the count for everyone.

What is recorded

Everything: who started the session, every entry and who made it, every variance and who reviewed it, every adjustment with its before and after figures, its reason code and who approved it. Posting an adjustment also tells your sales channels, so a stone counted down to zero stops being advertised.

Closed sessions feed the Cycle Count Variance report. Adjustments made from Quantity Reconciliation also appear there, as an automatically closed spot session, so every quantity correction in the system lands in one audit trail.