[LSX] How to Perform a Partial Inventory Count in Lightspeed Retail X Series Using the Lightspeed Scanner iOS app on an iPad/iPhone

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.

You can continue to add products to partial inventory count after it has been setup as the count is being performed.

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. Open the Lightspeed Scanner app on your iPhone or iPad.

2. At the top of the screen, tap the tab named "Inventory".

3. Under the section named "Inventory", tap "Count".

4. Under the section named "All counts", tap "Sign in to Lightspeed Retail".

5. Enter your business's subdomain in the field named "Store name".

6. Tap "Sign in to Lightspeed Retail".

7. Enter your credentials and then tap "Log in".

8. Choose the outlet that you will be performing the partial inventory for and then tap "Done" in the upper right hand corner.

9. Under the section named "Inventory", tap "Count".

10. In the upper right corner, tap "+ Create count".

11. Decide if you are going to start a new count now or if you are going to schedule one for the future..
12. If you are going to schedule a new count for the future, tap "Schedule count".

13. You will now see two new fields of data appear for the date and time for the scheduled count.  Enter them accordingly as needed.

14. If you are going to start a new count now, tap "Count now".

15. The steps to configure the partial inventory count will be the same going forward regardless of if you are counting now or scheduling a count in the future.
16. The outlet will already be chosen as it was done previously.  If you need to change the outlet, you can do so.

17. The "Count name" will automatically be generated for you.  You can change the "Count name" if you want to.

18. Under the section named "Choose which products to count", tap "Specific products".  This will tell the application that you will be performing a partial inventory count.

19. At the bottom of the window, tap "+ Add products to count".

20. A new window will appear where you can add products to the partial inventory count by either manually searching and adding them or you can also scan the products barcodes using the iPhone's or iPad's camera.

21. You can tap in the search window and manually find a product that you want to add to the count as shown below.  In this example, we searched for "wine" and chose the product named "2019 005 750ml".

22. Or you can tap the camera icon to the right of the search field to scan a barcode of a product using the iPhone's or iPad's internal camera and then add the product to the count.

23. The fields of data that you can use for searching are listed below.

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

24. At this time, you can't use both tags and categories together for filtering purposes.
25. 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.
26. Once you have finished adding products or filtering products that will be counted, tap "< New count" in the upper left hand corner of the window.

27. This will take you back to the setup screen for the partial inventory count that you are going to perform.

28. Once the setup of the partial inventory count has been completed, tap "Start" in the upper right hand corner of the window.

29. You will be notified that counts performed in the Lightspeed Scanner app are actively uploaded to the web browser every 10 seconds when online.  This helps prevent potential data loss, even when in the middle of counting.  Tap "Got it" to continue.

30. You will now be taken to where you will perform the partial inventory count as shown below.

31. You will see what products are included in the partial inventory count, if they have been counted , and what their counted values are.
32. You can add more products to the partial inventory count as it is being performed.
33. In this example, there is only one product that is part of the partial inventory count at this time and it is named "Barnum's Iced Animal Crackers" and it has not been counted yet.

34. At this point you can scan the barcode for the product once and then manually enter the counted value, you can scan the barcode for the product multiple times to increase the counted value to what it should be, or you can tap the listing for the product and then manually enter the counted value.
35. The original product counted was named "Barnum's Iced Animal Crackers" and a counted value of 5 has been entered and another product named "Barnum's Animal Crackers" was added to the partial inventory count while it was in progress and a counted value of 10 has been entered for it.

36. While counting products, you can expand a product the tap "Mark as 0 stock" if you want to quickly set its value to 0.

37. Once you have finished counting the products in the partial inventory count, tap "Finish counting" in the upper right hand corner.

38. You are now informed that the partial inventory count has been uploaded to your Lightspeed Retail X Series  account for reviewing.

39. It will shows you the basic details regarding the partial inventory count such as how many products were counted, how many 0 stock products are part of the count, and how many uncounted products there are in the count.

40. At this point, you will need to log into your Lightspeed Retail X Series account using Google Chrome to complete the partial inventory account.
41. Tap "Got it, thanks!".

42. You will be taken to the "All counts" area under the section named "Inventory" in the Lightspeed Scanner app and you will see the partial inventory count that is now ready for review/completion in Google Chrome.

Reviewing Partial Inventory Count Data

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

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

4. Click the name of the partial inventory count that you are working on.

5. Click "Review" in the upper right corner to proceed with completing the partial inventory count.

6. You will now see the details of the partial inventory count for you to review as shown below.

7. If you see a product with a red triangle beneath it, it means that the product in question was not part of your planned count from when it was setup.

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

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

• Uncounted: Lists all items where the total counted id 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.

10. 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.
11. Click the checkbox to the left of an item that you wish to make changes to.

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

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

14. 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".

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

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

17. Once you discard an inventory count, it will then be displayed on the tab named "Cancelled" on the "Inventory counts" page.
18. If any changes to your stock 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" -> "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.