Taking Inventory
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
Open the Dashboard, click the Inventory tab on the left, and pick how you want to count:
Do Inventory — the full physical count. TORO opens the Inventory Management screen with your items listed and their expected quantities. This is the thorough one. (Can't find it? Type "do inventory" in the search box at the top right.)
Do Inventory Quick Option — a faster, partial count. Instead of the whole store, it pulls a focused list — things like items with negative counts, your best sellers, and items whose counts are oldest — so you can knock out a quick check without walking every aisle.
Either way, the screen shows the items along with the quantity TORO expects you to have. That's your starting point. Up top you can narrow the list to just the items still needing a count, just your active items, or everything — whatever fits the job in front of you.
Counting Items
Work through the list item by item. Select an item and tell TORO what you actually found — click Adjust Selected Item QOH to enter the real count, or, if it's already right, click Current QOH is Correct to confirm it as-is. If you've got a barcode scanner — and you really should — scanning an item jumps you straight to it. It's significantly faster and cuts down on errors from searching by name.
As you go, the counts you enter sit right next to what the system expected, so any gaps are easy to spot. Don't panic when you see a difference — that's the whole reason you're doing this. Just keep working through the list.
Reconciling Differences
This is where the real work happens. As you set each item's true count, you're deciding what to do about every gap between expected and actual:
Recount first if it looks wrong. If the difference is large or suspicious, go back and count again before you commit it. A shelf in the back room is easy to miss.
Adjust it. When you're confident, enter the real number with Adjust Selected Item QOH and TORO sets the quantity on hand to match what you found.
Leave it for later. Not ready to commit an item? Click Do Inventory Later to set it aside and come back to it.
When you're done, click Apply to save your counts. Every 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.