Nobody loves counting inventory. But if you don’t know what you have, you can’t know what you’re missing — and what you’re missing is either money walking out the door or money sitting on a shelf you forgot about. TORO makes the process as painless as possible.
Starting a Count #
Head to Dashboard > Inventory > Inventory Count and click New Count. Before you start scanning and tallying, you’ll pick the scope of your count:
- Full count — every item in the store. Most thorough, but also the most time-consuming.
- Category count — just one product type (all cigars, all accessories, etc.).
- Vendor count — everything from a single brand or supplier.
- Custom selection — hand-pick specific items you want to count.
Once you’ve chosen, TORO opens a count session showing all the relevant items along with their expected quantities. That’s your starting point.
Counting Items #
Work through the list item by item. For each one, enter the actual quantity you have on hand. If you’ve got a barcode scanner — and you really should — you can scan each item and then punch in the count. It’s significantly faster and cuts down on errors from searching by name.
As you go, TORO highlights items where your count doesn’t match what the system expected. Don’t panic when you see discrepancies — that’s the whole reason you’re doing this. Just keep counting until you’ve worked through everything.
Reconciling Differences #
This is where the real work happens. After counting, review the discrepancy report that shows expected vs. actual quantities side by side. For each item that doesn’t match, you’ve got three options:
- Recount — if the difference is large or suspicious, go back and count again. A shelf in the back room is easy to miss.
- Accept — you’re confident in your count. TORO will adjust the quantity on hand to match what you found.
- Skip — something seems off and you want to investigate before committing. Come back to it later.
Every accepted adjustment gets recorded with the date, the employee who did it, and the reason. This creates an audit trail you can review anytime.
Which Method Should You Use? #
There’s no single right answer — it depends on your store and your schedule.
Full counts are the gold standard. You’ll get the most accurate picture of everything, but it takes time and ideally the store should be closed. Great for year-end or quarterly checkpoints.
Cycle counts are more practical for day-to-day. Pick one category or section, count it, move on to another one next week. Over the course of a month or two, you’ve covered the whole store without ever shutting down. Less disruptive, still effective.
Spot counts are for when something feels off. A high-value item seems low, a popular product keeps selling out faster than it should, or you just have a hunch. Quick, targeted, and often revealing.
Tips From Shops That Get This Right #
Close the store for full counts. If customers are buying while you’re counting, your numbers won’t add up. Period. Even counting after close is better than counting during business hours.
Use barcode scanners. Manual search works, but it’s slower and more error-prone. Scanning an item takes a second. Searching by name takes ten.
Question big discrepancies before accepting. If the system says you should have 50 of something and you counted zero, you almost certainly missed a shelf, a back room, or a display case. Recount before you write it off.
Understand what shrinkage really means. Shrinkage is the gap between what you expected and what you actually have. It doesn’t automatically mean theft. It can be damaged goods you forgot to log, receiving errors where you accepted a short shipment without noticing, data entry mistakes, or yes — sometimes theft. Don’t jump to conclusions.
Count regularly. Monthly, quarterly, whatever fits your operation. The shops that count regularly catch problems when they’re small. The shops that count once a year get unpleasant surprises.
Divide and conquer. In larger stores, assign different sections to different employees. It goes faster and gives each person ownership of their area.
Remember: everything is logged. Every adjustment, every count, every employee who touched it. If you ever need to go back and figure out what happened, the trail is there.
