[LSX] How to Perform a Partial Inventory Count in Lightspeed Retail X Series Using a web Browser

Partial inventory counts are usually performed on smaller sections of your stock, such as brands, types, or a specific supplier's items.

Doing normal partial inventory counts helps keep you up to date on your inventory throughout the year and your data as accurate as possible going into performing a full inventory count.

You can perform partial inventory counts during normal business hours to keep the inventory accurate.  You also can run multiple partial inventory counts at the same time but you need to make sure that you don't have products in multiple partial inventory counts.

Before you perform a partial inventory count, you will want to make sure that you are prepared for the task which includes like those listed below.

• Make sure that your barcode scanners are fully charged and operating properly.
• Cleaning areas where you will be performing the count to make everything easily accessible.
• Making sure that all products have printed labels or manufacturer UPCs for scanning purposes.
• Setup your products with brands, types, supplies, and/or tags to make filtering products easier.

This article is separated into three sections listed below.

• Performing Partial Inventory Count
• Reviewing Partial Inventory Count Data
• Completing Partial Inventory Count

Once the above has been done, we can proceed with starting a partial inventory count.

Performing Partial Inventory Count

1. Log into your Lightspeed Retail X Series account via Google Chrome.
2. In the left hand window pane, click "Inventory".

3. In the sub window pane, click "Inventory counts".

4. In the main window pane, click "Add inventory count".

5. Set both the "Start Date" and "Start Time" for the count.  Please note that it will automatically default to the current date and can't be before today) but you can schedule counts in the future.

6. Now choose the outlet that you will be performing the count for.  Once the outlet has been chosen, the "Count name" will automatically be generated.  Please note that you can manually change the "Count name" if you want to.

7. Under the section named "Choose products to count", click "Partial count".

8. Use the search field to add filters to your partial inventory count.

9. Fields of data that you can use for searching are listed below.

• name
• brand
• type
• tag
• supplier
• SKU

10. At this time, you can't use both tags and categories together for filtering purposes.
11. If you enter a type, brand, tag, or supplier as a filter, all products that belong to those fields will automatically be added to the partial inventory count.
12. If you enter a name like "wine" to the search area, it will bring up a list of items that have that value and you can manually add those products to the partial inventory count.  In the below example, we searched for wine and it brough up all product that were a member of the "wine" product category and we manually added a product named "2019 Pinot Grigio 750ml" to the partial inventory count.

13. Once you have entered all of the filters for products that will be part of the partial inventory count or individual products, click "Start count".

14. The inventory count has been created and you are ready to start counting.
15. You can manually search for products and enter their counts or you can scan their barcodes using a barcode scanner.
16. If you enable "Quick scan mode", each time you either scan a barcode for a product or manually search for a product it will automatically add 1 to the count for that product.
17. In the below example, we manually searched for a product while "Quick scan mode" is enabled and each time it was entered a count of 1 was added for that product.  For this product, we searched 4 times for the same product and it increased the count for the product to 4.

18. If you do not not enable "Quick scan mode", each time you either manually search for a product or scan a barcode, it will allow you to manually enter the count for the product.  In this example, we manually entered 4 for the product.

19. When a product has been counted in the count, it will be displayed at the top in the upper right hand corner.

20. If you made a mistake with a counted item, you can click the "Trash" icon to the right of the counted listing to delete it from the count.

21. Every time you count a item, the information about the items in the count will be automatically updated as shown below for the sections named "All", "Counted", and "Uncounted".

22. Every time your count is updated, it will be automatically saved and it will be displayed to the left of the "Pause" and "Review" buttons in the upper right hand corner.

23. At any point in the count, you can click "Pause" in the upper right hand corner to put the count on hold and come back to it at a later time if needed.

Reviewing Partial Inventory Count Data

1. Once you have counted all of your items in the partial inventory count, you can review the count by clicking "Review" in the upper right hand corner.

2. There are five tabs of data for the count for you to go through and they are shown below.

3. They are "Uncounted", "Unmatched", "Matched", "Excluded", and "All".

• Uncounted: Lists all items where the total counted is 0.  This includes items with an expected count of 0.
• Unmatched: Lists all items that had a count greater than or less than what is expected.  For example: This includes items where you expected that negative or positive amount and counted 0.
• Matched: Lists all items that you have counted where the counted amount equals the expected amount in Lightspeed Retail X Series.
• Excluded: Any items that you have manually excluded from your full inventory count.
• All: All items from each tab totaled into one.

4. Go through the items in your count to look for and address any issues by either recounting an item or excluding an item from the count.
5. Click the checkbox to the left of an item that you wish to make changes to.

6. Click the drop down section named "Choose an action (X selected)".

7. You will then have two options and they are "Recount items" and "Exclude items in count".

8. If you click "Recount items", you will reset the count for the item back to zero so that you can count the item again by clicking "Continue".

9. If you click "Exclude items in count", it will remove the item from the count.

10. You can also discard an inventory count should you need to do so by clicking "Discard" in the upper right hand corner.

11. Once you discard an inventory count, it will then be displayed on the tab named "Cancelled" on the "Inventory counts" page.
12. If any changes to your stock are made during a partial inventory count for whatever reason, you will need to make any final adjustments so that the data is accurate.

Completing Partial Inventory Count

1. After you have reviewed and confirmed your partial inventory count and that you are sure that all counts are correct, click "Complete" in the upper right hand corner.

2. Once you have confirmed that you have verified that the data in the partial inventory count is correct, click "Complete".

3. After you have completed the partial inventory count, the data will be processed and it could take a little bit of time to go through the count and apply the changes.
4. After the partial inventory count has been applied, will be displayed as shown below.

5. There will be three tabs named "Unmatched", "Matched", and "All".
6. All of the items in the partial inventory count will be shown with all of their associated data and you can see the total changes in both units and costs at the bottom of the results.
7. Once the partial inventory count has been completed, you can export the data to either a PDF report or a CSV report by clicking the appropriate button as shown below.

8. If you choose a PDF report, it will be formatted so that it includes the expected and final count, change in cost, and total value of each item's inventory after the count for each product.  It will also give you a summary with total changes for the full inventory count.
9. If you choose a CSV report, it will prepare a CSV file with a line for each product count.  It will also provide you with columns for SKU, supplier code, expected stock, and actual quantity, as well as stock count difference, difference cost, and inventory value of each product's inventory after the full inventory count was completed.  This is usually used to import into another software system or platform or for generating your own reports.
10. You can review your historical inventory counts by going into "Inventory" and then "Inventory counts" from the main menu bar and then click on the "Completed" tab and then select the name of the partial inventory count that you want to go through.