For a head office in the Netherlands, a Belgian store is often closer than one in the north of its own country. Deliveries, ranges and store formats are largely the same. The stocktake is where the border shows.

What stays the same, and what does not

The physical work is identical on both sides. Staff scan items, enter quantities and work through the store zone by zone. What differs is everything around it. Stores in the two countries usually belong to different legal entities, each with its own accounts and often its own auditor. Count results therefore have to be separable by entity, even if the project is run as one. Trading hours and public holidays are not the same, which affects when a store can be counted. And store teams may work in Dutch on one side and in Dutch or French on the other, which matters for the count instructions more than for the technology.

None of this is dramatic. It becomes a problem when each country solves it separately, with its own spreadsheets, its own count sheets and its own way of sending figures to finance. Then nobody at head office can say on the night how far the count has progressed overall, and differences between stores cannot be compared.

Three design decisions

The first is to standardise the procedure and vary only what must vary. Count zones, the rule for recounts, the handling of damaged goods and the cut-off for deliveries can be the same everywhere. Dates, languages of the written instructions and the receiving entity are local.

The second is to decide early how results reach the books. If both entities sit in the same ERP, results can be returned per store and assigned through the store’s company code. If they do not, each needs its own export. This is a question for the interface, and it is better answered in October than in January.

The third concerns people and devices. Counting with the stores’ own staff keeps product knowledge in the process. But a network that grows by a few stores every year rarely holds enough handhelds for a simultaneous count. Counting stores in waves, or adding rental devices for the count period, solves this without buying equipment that sits in a cupboard for eleven months.

Self-managed, with support in the background

Between counting entirely alone and handing the count to an external team, there is a middle route that suits cross-border networks well. The retailer’s own staff count. Software, a counting app, additional devices and support come from a specialist. Head office keeps the schedule and the results in its own hands, and the procedure is the same in every store, whichever country it is in.

How COSYS supports cross-border stocktakes

COSYS, a German provider of mobile data capture and inventory solutions, supports self-managed and assisted stocktakes. With the COSYS Inventory Service, master data is taken over from the retailer’s system before the count. Head office creates count lists per store and zone in the COSYS WebDesk and transfers them to handheld devices or smartphones running the COSYS inventory app. After the count, results are reviewed in the WebDesk and returned to the retailer’s system online or in batches. Customer-specific import and export routines are possible, so how results are split between entities is defined in the project. Rental devices are available for the count period.

Planning a year-end stocktake across stores in more than one country? Contact the COSYS team for individual advice on inventory software, the counting app, rental handhelds and data transfer to your ERP. You can arrange an appointment by email at vertrieb@cosys.de or by phone on +49 5062 900 0. Alternatively, you can try the free COSYS Inventory Demo App for Android and iOS.