Surprise spot checks: how to design them so they work

In many warehouses the records look fine all year and then a pile of differences appears at the year-end count. The reason is simple: nobody checks in between, so accuracy depends on goodwill. A surprise spot check keeps a moderate amount of pressure on the records during the year. It is not fault-finding and it is not about catching people. It tells everyone that somebody may turn up at any time with the books and walk to the shelf, so every entry needs to be right on the day.

State the purpose clearly

A spot check has three aims: to spot early signs of trouble before year end, to test how accurate daily records are, and to build the habit of posting on the same day. Explain these aims to everyone. The rules, meaning that checks exist, that they may happen at any time and how findings are handled, should be shared with the warehouse team beforehand. Only the exact date and items stay secret. That makes a spot check a procedure and not an ambush.

Which items to check

Do not choose at random alone, and do not check only the easy ones. A workable mix is:

• about 70% by risk: high-value items, fast movers, small items that are easy to take and items that showed differences in earlier counts;
• about 30% at random, using random numbers or every Nth line of the item list so that the storekeeper cannot guess the pattern;
• a few items taken from last week's issue documents, because the newest records are the most likely to be wrong and the easiest to trace.

Generate each check list on the day itself, and never leak it in advance.

How often, who checks and how

The frequency need not be high, but it must be steady. A common pattern is 10 to 15 items a week, with results from several warehouses pulled together monthly. What matters is that it never stops. Even 5 items each time works better than one big count a year.

The checker should be someone who does not normally work at that location: a finance colleague, a project manager, a storekeeper from another warehouse or an outside party. Work in pairs, one counting and one recording. Rotate the checkers, so that no fixed personal relationships form.

The steps are:

1. Before starting, export or screenshot the system quantities of these items at that moment and note the time, so nobody can say later that the quantity changed while you were counting.
2. Count at the location, and just count. Do not first ask the storekeeper what the number should be.
3. Compare with the system quantity and check the latest few receipts and issues.
4. If the figures agree, sign and move on.
5. If they differ, ask another person to recount on the spot.

What to do with a difference

How you respond decides whether spot checks can continue for the long term:

• Ask "what happened to this document afterwards?" and not "who took it?"
• If the difference is a unit or two and has a reasonable explanation, note the cause and have the storekeeper post the document that day.
• If it is larger or unexplained, put it on a follow-up list with an owner and a deadline.
• If the same item or the same person keeps showing differences, the process is at fault, so look at the process and not just at the person.
• Report the results to management every month, good results as well, so that people see their effort pays off.

An invented example

A warehouse checks 12 items a week for 8 weeks, a total of 96 item checks, of which 9 differ from the system. Tracing them: 6 were documents not posted on the day and added the next day, 2 were look-alike items put in the wrong location, and 1 cannot yet be explained and goes on the follow-up list. 6 + 2 + 1 = 9. (The figures are invented.) The trend matters more: 6 differences in the first 4 weeks and only 3 in the last 4 suggest that the habit of same-day posting is forming.

In short

The value of a spot check is to make accuracy routine and not a year-end scramble. UzWarehouse's warehouse audit reviews goods-in and goods-out, locations, documents and access control, traces count differences to their source and finishes with practical recommendations.