Stock in transit between warehouses during a count

Goods on the road between two warehouses sit on neither shelf. If a count ignores them, the sending site has already written them off and the receiving site has not yet received them, so a shortage appears out of nowhere. If both sites record them, the same goods are counted twice. How in-transit goods are handled decides whether the multi-warehouse total matches what the company really owns.

What "in transit" means

In transit means dispatched from site A and not yet accepted into stock at site B. It can last half an hour or several days, especially on transfers from Tashkent to the regions.

First find out how your books treat a transfer, because that decides where the gap will show:

• Two-step booking: A is reduced at dispatch, and B increases only when it accepts the goods. While the goods travel, they are on nobody's books.
• One-step booking: A is reduced and B is increased at the moment of dispatch. While the goods travel, B's books already hold them although its shelves do not.

Neither is wrong, but you must know which one you use before the count, and you should not change it during the count.

Four situations around the cut-off

Measured against the shared cut-off time, goods on the move fall into these cases:

• Dispatched and accepted by B before the cut-off: part of B's count, and no longer part of A's.
• Dispatched before the cut-off but arriving after it: listed as in transit, on no shelf.
• Dispatch note issued after the cut-off: still A's stock, even if the goods were loaded and driven away during the count.
• Picked before the cut-off but no dispatch note yet, sitting in the loading area: still A's stock, counted separately as "loading area".

When a case is unclear, ask one question: at the cut-off moment, did a dispatch note exist? If yes, it is in transit. If not, it stays with A. The rule is simple, and it makes different sites and different people give the same answer to the same situation.

An in-transit register

The day before the count, the coordinator builds an in-transit register with one row per transfer and at least these columns:

• transfer document number
• SKU and quantity, with the unit
• sending and receiving warehouse
• date and time of dispatch
• vehicle or driver contact
• expected arrival time
• acceptance date and accepted quantity
• status: in transit, accepted, difference

For the larger transfers, do not rely on paperwork alone. Ask the driver or loader for a photo of the loaded vehicle and a signature on the handover note, so that a later dispute has something to rest on.

A worked example

Suppose A's books show 520 phone cases (A-1187) and at 16:30 it sends 80 to B, whose books show 100. The shared cut-off is 18:00 and the truck arrives at 19:30.

Site A counts 440 on its shelves. Site B counts 100 on its shelves.

• Two-step booking: A's books say 440 and the count is 440, no gap. B's books say 100 and the count is 100, no gap. The register holds 80. The total, 440 plus 100 plus 80, is 620 pieces, which is what the company owns.
• One-step booking: A's books say 440 and the count is 440. B's books already say 180 but only 100 are on the shelf, so B looks 80 short. The register explains it: 100 plus 80 equals 180.

Either way the total is 620, with nothing counted twice and nothing missing.

Closing the register afterwards

When the truck arrives, B accepts the goods against the transfer document, writes the quantity received into the register and compares it with the quantity sent. If they agree, the row is closed. If not, it is a transport difference that someone has to trace: a loading miscount, an unloading miss or a real loss.

Also set a time limit. Ask the owner to explain any transfer that has been in transit for more than, say, three days. The longer goods go untracked, the more likely they become goods nobody will own up to.

In short

Transit stock is not mysterious. One cut-off time, one register and one clear booking rule keep it from being counted twice or lost. InventoryHub schedules multi-warehouse counts around a shared cut-off, and goods transferred between warehouses are booked by the documents on either side of it.