Carrying out a Stocktake in MEX

Stocktakes are essential to most businesses as they contribute to the smooth operation of the business. This means that one way or another someone is going to have to perform regular stocktakes and as a result gather the information you need to continue running the business profitably.

Although the world has moved into the digital age, so many businesses still use pen and paper to carry out stocktakes. This carries with it deficiencies that can lead to uncounted stock, which in time can be a waste of time and money.

We’ve all carried out a stocktake before – for myself, when I was in high school I worked at Coles. I was given a pad and pencil and told to walk up and down an aisle counting cans of fish and chicken. I learnt two things;

• The first being that I hated stocktakes; and
• Secondly, it was frustrating and tedious to write down barcode numbers. Increasing the likelihood that mistakes in numbers could be made.

I wished I had something like MEX on my phone back then.

After reading this article, you won’t need a pad and pencil. You won’t need to write down any barcode numbers. No one is going to have to try and read your horrible handwriting and then enter it into their MEX system.

Introducing MEX Stocktakes. With barcode scanning and instant data entry, stocktakes have never been so easy.

Let’s get started.

Creating a New Stocktake in MEX

Creating a new stocktake in MEX is easy.

• Open MEX on your desktop computer and from the main menu click the Stores button
• This will open the MEX Stores Menu.
• On the right hand side, click the Stocktakes button.
• In the Stocktake listing look down the bottom left and click the New Stocktake button
• A blank stocktake details form will open ready for you to populate.
• Fill in the Stocktake description. Note that this is the only mandatory field and will always need to be filled in for every stocktake you create.
• Now, we need to enter in the Catalogue items we are going to include in the stocktake.
• You can do this by just clicking on a New Line and selecting a Catalogue item with the Ellipses button.
• Once selected, leave the Count Field empty for now as we will enter this on the iPad later.

A Quick Way to Select Stock

Entering each item individually is going to take some time. Luckily there is an easier way to do this;

• Click on the Select Stock button.
• Fine tune exactly which Catalogue items you want to include.
• Or optionally, leave all the fields blank. This will add all items in your catalogue at once.
• Once you have added the catalogue items you want, close the stocktake details and go ahead and grab your iPad.

Opening a Stocktake list on the MEX iOS app

You have created your stocktake, now let’s move on to carrying out the stocktake on the MEX iOS CMMS app. With MEX iOS open

• From the Main Menu, tap the Stores button
• On the Stores Menu tap Stocktake in the middle.
• In the resulting list there are two different views that you can use to perform a stocktake, Classic and App View.
• For this example we will be using the App View so make sure that you are in that view. If you see down the bottom right hand side of the screen the button ‘Switch to App View’ click it to change the view.
• In the listing, you should see the stocktake we created above.
• Tap that Stocktake row and enter the details.
• Now we’re ready to begin the stocktake.

Carrying out the Stocktake

As you walk around the store going from item to item, the search bar becomes your best friend. You can either

• Type in the full name of the item
• Tap the barcode icon to bring up the camera-barcode scanner; or
• Connect up a Bluetooth barcode scanner, which is what I’d recommend.

We’ve touched on setting up and scanning barcodes before so check out this article: Barcoding in MEX with the MEX iOS App

NB: You have probably noticed that in the count column there are fields which are completely blank. This always catches people out - when a stocktake is processed, if the count is blank it will skip that item all together. If the count is zero however, that means it will process that stock item as having zero stock on hand.

Once you have a count for an item, you can enter either directly into the count field or use the plus and minus symbols next to the text field. If the count field is blank and you click plus it will set the count as the current stock on hand plus one and vice versa for minus.

After you’ve finished counting all the items, just hit process. This will create a stock adjustment transaction for each line that has a count and adjust the current stock on hand accordingly.

Stocktaking While Offline

MEX Stocktakes are also available in a disconnected state through the MEX Go Mobile feature on the MEX iOS app. It’s just as powerful as the connected version, you still have access to barcode scanning, only you can perform your stocktake well out of network range. Just remember to sync when you’re done! We have a great video which looks at Go Mobile in depth: Exploring the MEX iOS Go Mobile Feature

That’s all there is to know about creating a stocktake in MEX and carrying it out on the MEX iOS app.

Any Questions?

If you have any questions about Stocktakes in MEX or any other topic covered in this article please contact the MEX Support team at support@mex.com.au or call +61 7 3392 4777.

Author Maitland Marshall