for accountants
You are asked to sign off on a stock position you did not observe, counted by people you have never met, in a warehouse you have not walked. Most of the time the number is close enough. The work is in finding out whether this is one of those times.
This page is about what changes when a client runs a scanned, configured warehouse: where the figure comes from, what stands behind it, and how to tell which of your clients is still guessing.
When a client's warehouse is scanned, the stock figure stops being a monthly event and becomes a record of movements. Every receipt, pick, transfer and correction carries a timestamp and a person.
That changes your job at the margin rather than in principle. You still test the figure. But testing it means sampling a trail instead of reconstructing one, and the questions you ask at year-end stop being answered with "we think so".
Inventory valuation is only as good as the quantity underneath it. A stock figure that is trued up by a count once a year tells you what was there on one day, and implies everything else.
A scanned operation records quantity at location and lot level as the work happens. Corrections exist — they always do — but they carry a reason code and a timestamp, which means a write-down can be traced to the movement that caused it rather than inferred from a variance.
The platform connects to the client's finance system rather than replacing it. Pre-built connectors cover the major ERP and accounting systems — Exact, Sage, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite and others — plus a shared integration layer for anything specific to one client.
For you that means one set of numbers with one origin. Goods receipts, deliveries, stock counts and corrections arrive in the finance system as records rather than as a spreadsheet somebody assembled at month end. Nothing is re-keyed, so nothing diverges.
Selling on a webshop or a marketplace is where an unreliable stock figure becomes visible to customers, and then to you. Overselling produces credit notes. Returns arrive faster than they are booked. The stock in the shop and the stock on the shelf drift apart, and the difference lands in your reconciliation.
Connectors to the common e-commerce platforms and marketplaces keep the promised quantity and the physical quantity on the same record, and returns are received against the original order with a reason. The reconciliation gets shorter because there is less to reconcile.
Most clients hand shipping to one or more carriers, and the cost of that arrives as an invoice that has to be matched against shipments nobody recorded in detail.
Carrier integrations record the shipment, the label and the track-and-trace against the order that caused it. Carrier cost becomes attributable to orders rather than being a monthly lump, which is the difference between knowing a client's cost to serve and estimating it.
Consignment stock, goods on a shop floor, items with a subcontractor. This is where most SMB stock records quietly stop being true, because the movement happens outside the system that records movements.
The platform treats those as locations rather than as exceptions, so a transfer to a store or a subcontractor is a movement with the same trail as any other. When a client tells you they have stock in three places, you can see all three.
The annual count is where the year's accumulated approximations become one number, usually over a weekend, usually in December, usually by people who would rather be somewhere else.
Cycle counting during the year changes the shape of that. Locations are counted on a rolling basis, variances are investigated when they are small and recent rather than large and old, and the year-end count becomes a confirmation rather than a discovery. You can pull the position, the movements behind it and the corrections with their reasons at any point in the year, which is the same information you would otherwise assemble in January.
If you work with several clients in this position, the partner programme sets out how a referral or an advisory arrangement works:
If a client's stock barely moves and the stock figure exists mainly for your accounts, their ERP's inventory module is enough. A warehouse system on top would give them a second place to maintain and you no better a number.
The threshold is a behaviour rather than a size. It tips when people start searching — when a picker walks to a location and the goods are not there, when a stock figure is only believed after someone counts it, when the answer to "do we have it" is a phone call. A client who never reaches that point is running a manual process that works, and telling them so is worth more than a referral.
The features below are the ones that show up in your work rather than the client's. The full list is longer and is on the feature library.
The system directs the sequence of work rather than relying on who is on shift. Two weeks in the same month look the same, which is what makes a trend in the numbers mean something.
An order can be blocked, released partially or released fully, with the decision recorded. Cut-off at period end stops being a judgement call made on the floor.
The client's own ERP or accounting package, or one from the supported list. Movements arrive as records; nothing is typed twice.
Stock moving between entities in the same group is recorded as a movement on both sides, with the trail intact. Intercompany reconciliation stops being an annual archaeology project.
Expiry dates and lot numbers are tracked at location level, so stock is used in the right order. Write-offs shrink because fewer items quietly expire in a back corner.
Who moved what, when, from where to where, and why if it was a correction. This is the part that makes a sample test possible.
Our solutions
The platform is a Warehouse Management System, an Order Management System and the integration layer that connects both to the systems a client already runs. Most clients start with one and add the next when their operation asks for it.
Scope is cumulative: SME+ contains everything in SME, Enterprise everything in SME+. A growing client moves up a tier rather than re-implementing.
Why take our word for it? We let our customers convince you instead. BizBloqs customers are happy with their solutions and don’t hesitate to share their positive experiences. Our ability to turn any challenge into an efficient solution never fails to impress!
BizBloqs was one of the first to provide a WMS with scanning capabilities and we started a journey together. Our operations have gotten a lot more complex, advanced and especially bigger over the past 5 years and we have simply grown together.
Nick Bisselink, Financial/Operational Director
When we had extensive logistic requirements beyond the capabilities of our financial solution, BizBloqs shared its expertise to transform Lantaarn’s entire warehouse experience together
Lantaarn Publishers
We needed a better, more transparent and practical system for our incoming and outgoing product flow. A direct overview in our stock and all our logistics movements was really a must. BizBloqs helped us from the start!
Rik Klein - Sales manager
In addition to a scan procedure with EDI integration, BizBloqs has set up an entire production system for us. Production planning can provide direct instructions and as soon as they are ready, it all arrives in the OMS. This gives us a larger production capacity and a drastic reduction of the picking mistakes in dispatching.
Reinier Schot, Head of Production
Tell us about a client whose stock figures are costing you time at year-end. We will look at their situation with you, show what the numbers would look like on a live system, and you decide whether to introduce us.
How many of your articles sit in a pick location they empty less than once a month?
Part one: Laying out a warehouse does not start with the racking
After your last integration, how many systems hold a stock quantity for the same item? Name them.
