Taking a Physical Inventory

This is the walkthrough for the count most shops do once or twice a year: close up, count everything, and settle the differences. If you only ever read one Inventory Count article, read this one.

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

1. Create the session

Inventory Count → New Count. Give it a name you will recognize a year from now (“Annual Count 2026”), leave the type on Full Physical, and tick the inventory types you carry — Jewelry, Watches, Diamonds, Colored Stones, Pearls. They all start ticked.

Only the types you tick are counted, and they are the only ones the session can adjust. A shop that carries no watches can leave Watches ticked with no harm — there is simply nothing to find.

Save, and the session sits in Draft. Nothing is frozen yet, and a draft is the only state you can delete.

2. Print the sheets (optional)

From the session, Print Blind Sheet gives you Stock ID, type, description, location and an empty box. The counter has no idea what is expected, which is the honest way to count. Print Tagged Sheet prints the expected quantity next to each line — faster to reconcile, but it trusts the counter.

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

3. Start the count

Start Count takes the snapshot: one row per in-scope item recording its quantity, carats, location and description at that instant. That baseline is what the count is measured against for the rest of the session — not the live quantity.

Items with nothing on the shelf are not in scope. A piece entirely out on memo is out of the count, correctly — it is not there to be found.

4. Count

Scan or type each Stock ID and enter what you find. Points that matter in practice:

• Several entries for one Stock ID add up. Two people counting two trays of the same parcel is fine.
• Not Found records a zero, rather than leaving a silent gap.
• Any entry can be removed while the session is in progress.
• If the item’s quantity has changed since the snapshot, the screen tells you right then. The entry is still recorded; it is a heads-up, not a block.
• If a Stock ID exists in two of the types you are counting, JewelTrak asks which one you are holding instead of guessing.

A progress bar shows entries against the size of the snapshot.

Stones set into a mounting

A loose stone linked into a piece keeps its own stock record, so the ring and the stone inside it are two things to account for — but only one thing in your hand.

Enter either one and JewelTrak asks about the other. It works whichever number you type: enter the ring and it asks about the stones set in it; enter the stone and it asks about the mounting.

• Include records the linked item as counted, so it doesn’t come back as missing. The review screen shows it was counted alongside the piece rather than handled on its own.
• Don’t include records nothing — and breaks the link, because the only reason to say it is that the two aren’t actually together. The linked item then counts like anything else: find it separately, or it shows as a variance.

That second point is the one to be deliberate about. If a stone was pulled out of a mounting months ago and nobody updated JewelTrak, the count is when you find out — and answering honestly fixes the record at the same time.

Set stones are not affected. They’re part of the piece and have no separate stock record, so there is nothing to count twice.

The same prompt appears on invoices and memos: put a setting on a document and it offers its stones, put a stone on and it offers the setting. Declining there breaks the link too, for the same reason.

5. What if the count takes a week?

It can. Nothing is locked and nothing you have counted is rewritten.

Keep selling, memoing and receiving as normal. When you press Close for Review, JewelTrak adds up everything that actually moved each item since the count started — sales, memos out, memo returns — and any difference that matches its movement exactly is labeled Movement Explained. Those are not shrinkage; they are ordinary business that happened while you were walking the cases.

6. Review

Close for Review computes the variances and shows four numbers: total entries, True Variances, Movement Explained, and Resolved.

Work the Movement Explained group first — Accept All Explained clears it in one press, and accepting changes no stock. What is left is the real list.

For each remaining row:

• Accept — “I looked at this, no correction needed.” Writes no stock.
• Post Adjustment — sets the quantity on hand (and carats, for a stone) to what you counted, with 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, which nobody has by default. This is the moment a loss gets absorbed into the books, so it belongs to whoever owns that decision.

⚠️ Post promptly, and don’t post something the movement engine already explained. Posting writes the figure you counted, which was true when you counted it. If a piece sold after you counted it and you post anyway, you put a sold piece back on the books.

Found something on the shelf the system did not expect? It shows as not on system, and posting it with reason Found brings it onto the books.

7. Close

Once nothing is left pending, Close Session. The session is now a permanent record: who counted what, who reviewed it, every adjustment with its before and after figures, its reason and who approved it. Posting also tells your sales channels, so a stone counted down to zero stops being advertised.

Closed sessions feed the Cycle Count Variance report, which is where you look for patterns across counts.

One session or several?

One session can cover every inventory type at once, which is what most shops want for an annual count. Split it up when the counts genuinely happen separately — different days, different people, different rooms — because each session has its own snapshot, review and close. Counting the vault on Monday and the showroom on Thursday is cleanly two sessions, each with a location.

See also Cycle Counts if you want smaller scheduled counts through the year, and Inventory Count Overview for the mechanics in detail.