I’m looking for some guidance with cycle counting. Is anyone utilizing the manual ABC code or override frequency at the part level for cycle counting?
Here is our situation. We have a couple of instances where parts need to be counted monthly regardless of inventory value or transactional value/frequency. I’ve attempted to have this work in a couple of ways. I added a new ABC code that is set for 1% stock value in hopes it will not pick up any parts based on that threshold. I then set the part to have a manual ABC code and set it there. I ran my cycle count schedule maintenance for the next couple of months and the part comes up in the first month’s count, but not on the second month.
I also attempted to utilize the override frequency at the part/site/warehouse level, setting this to 30, expecting that would have the system count the parts every 30 days regardless of what ABC code was then assigned. I don’t know if this did anything because the part did not come up on any of the counts that were initiated.
I have a BAQ that I run that looks for the Manual ABC code checkbox and the Z ABC (yes even with these settings when you recalculate ABCs some parts will inevitably by Z but those are also parts with no Inventory & no transactions so its not a big deal for us).
I then just take that list of parts and make a new Cycle Count Schedule and add them to that.
I know you can force the frequency or make A monthly (which we do) and make them A, etc but the parts that fall into these need to be counted together as they are quasi-interchangeable with others in the list and they also represent the highest value inputs that go into 99% of everything we produce so they would be absolute shutdown items if they run out.
You say it shows up in Month 1 but not Month 2, are you creating multiple months at once? If so, that will never work, no part can be on more than 1 cycle at a time. Whatever your cycle count period is (Monthly, weekly, etc) you can only set up one ‘batch’ at a time, trying to do monthly but setting up more than 1 month at a time will not work.
Thank you for the quick response, that is very helpful. I wasn’t sure how I could test this without attempting to setup multiple months of cycle counting at one time.
Based on your knowledge and experience, would you suggest utilizing the manual ABC or override frequency for our situation?
I would use Manual ABC, exclude from CC and then manually create a special CC Schedule and add the parts to it manually as that is what we do here.
It obviously then needs to be done manually but for 4 companies and approx. 700 parts combined the monthly process of setting it up takes 20-30 minutes and then we know that the parts are definitely being added to it.
Also just to clarify, the rest of our regular monthly cycle counting is all generated by Epicor, I create the schedule, give it the date range and then use the built in processes to do everything else down to picking the parts for the month, it is only our ‘month end counts’ that get the manual treatment.
If you just want to have the parts counted monthly without the special considerations we have then I would make your ‘A’ Monthly and use the manual ABC to set them to ‘A’ and still would avoid the override frequency as you shouldn’t need it at that point.
