Production orders not closed
Do this first. Open work in progress during a count produces variance nobody can attribute and undermines confidence in the whole exercise.
Dynamics 365 Business Central · Readiness
Inventory count readiness checklist
Twenty checks before a physical count, so the adjustment tells you something rather than merely reconciling a number.
Why run this
What this checklist is for
A physical count that produces a large adjustment and no explanation has told you your records are wrong and nothing about why. The second part is where the value is.
Most of the preparation below is about making the variance interpretable rather than making it smaller.
Run it with
Finance director
And with
Warehouse and production managers
And with
System administrator
0 of 0 complete · 0%
The checklist
20 checks, in the order we would run them
Tick only what you can genuinely evidence today. An item you intend to do is not an item you have done, and scoring yourself generously here only produces a comfortable number and an uncomfortable project.
Section 1
Before the count
Preparation that determines whether the result means anything.
Section 2
Scope and method
Decisions that should be made deliberately rather than by default.
Section 3
Execution
The practical arrangements that determine data quality.
Section 4
After the count
Where the value actually is.
What your score means
Read this against the number above
These bands are deliberately blunt. The middle band is where most organizations honestly sit, and it is a perfectly reasonable place to proceed from — provided the gaps are written down with owners rather than carried as optimism.
0–59%Significant gaps
Do not proceed yet. More than four in ten items are unaddressed, and the ones that fail here are usually the foundational ones that make everything after them harder.
60–84%Mostly ready, with known gaps
Proceed on a defined scope, with the outstanding items written into the plan as risks with owners and dates. This is the most common honest position.
85–100%Ready
The remaining gaps are small enough to handle during delivery rather than before it. Confirm the unticked items are genuinely minor rather than simply unexamined.
Your score highlights automatically as you tick items above. Nothing is saved, sent or tracked — refreshing the page clears it.
Closing the gaps
If you could not tick these, start here
The four items below are the ones whose absence causes the most trouble downstream. If your unticked items include any of these, they are worth addressing before the rest.
No materiality threshold
Agree it before you count. Set after the fact, it looks like a decision made to avoid investigating something.
Variance not analysed by cause
This is where the count pays for itself. A value-only analysis tells you the size of the problem and nothing about the fix.
Accuracy not tracked over time
Start now. A single count is a snapshot; the trend is what tells you whether your processes are working.
Want a second opinion on your score?
We will review your current warehouse configuration and counting approach, and show you where directed workflows would reduce the variance you are counting rather than just measuring it.
Talk through your result Read the related guides We reply to every message within one business day.
Keep going
Related checklists
Disaster recovery readiness checklist
Twenty checks on whether a manufacturer could resume production after losing its systems, measured in shifts rather than days.
March 21, 2026 · 20 checksOpen
Manufacturing data quality audit
Twenty checks on whether plant data can be trusted to inform costing, planning and margin decisions.
March 7, 2026 · 20 checksOpen