Machine or market audits are performed to track inventory variance, especially in situations where inventory appears to consistently not match or go missing. Constant inventory adjustments by drivers or incorrect prekit calls can be indicative of a machine that should be audited to regulate variance, or in the case of markets, audits are recommended to be performed regularly to identify or track theft.
Frequency of auditing depends on personal preference and how often the machine/market is serviced.
The ability to perform an inventory audit must first be enabled by going to Company Settings > Route Planning, clicking Edit and then clicking the toggle for Audit Scheduling.
NOTE: Inventory audits can not be performed on offline assets.
Second, audits must be enabled per route by first going to Settings > Routing > Routes, and clicking
to the far right of the route containing machines to be audited. Under the Advanced tab, in the second column you will see a checkbox allowing you to Schedule Audits. If clicked, a second option Enable Dynamic Audits will appear.
Dynamic audits are for automatically scheduling audits for a machine after a designated number of days or services since the last audit.
After audits are enabled, an additional column will populate when planning the route, labeled Audit. Both the Audit checkbox and the Planned checkbox must be clicked in order to have the machine added to be serviced with an audit scheduled.
If dynamic audits are enabled and a machine or market meets the criteria for a required audit, then the audit checkbox will be already clicked off and locked, but the Planned checkbox must also be clicked in order to add the machine or market to the route to be serviced.
Once the machine and audit have been added to the route, it will appear on the Route Progress screen with a small Audit button, which will be orange if the audit is pending completion, or green if it has been completed.
From the Stock app, the machine scheduled for an audit can be accessed normally from the route, but will have limited servicing options available.
Once the machine has been marked as serviced via a Fill Dex or Manual Parlevel, the Inventory button with the alert notification will appear.
Clicking the Inventory button will prompt the driver to enter final product quantities for every selection in the machine.
Quantities must be assigned for all selections. Any inventory left at 0 when saving the audit will be marked as having 0 units.
Audit Variance Report
Under Analytics > Vending Operations > Audit Variance Report, you may view a comparison report between two past audits.
To begin, you can select the machine you'd like to view from the dropdown. Only machines with at least one audit will be available to select. Then you can select the Ending audit and the beginning audit to compare. This process will need at least two audits to have been completed.
Once you have selected a machine and two of its audits to compare, you can run the report.
There are totals up at the top for all selections in the machine. From left to right, they are:
- Audit (1st date): This is the total number of product units reported for this audit.
- Added: This is the number of units added to the machine/market through prekitting.
- Removed: This is the number of units removed by indicating them as shrinkage.
- Sold: This is the number of units sold between the two audits.
- Expected: This is the number of units that would be expected to be in the machine or market.
- Audit (2nd date): This is the number of units reported to be in the machine/market for the second audit.
- Variance: This is the discrepancy between the Expected units and the reported units.
- Variance Cost: This is the number of units indicated in the Variance column multiplied by their respective values.
Below the totals, each product will have its audit variances broken down individually. It will be further broken down by asset if the audits are from a micro market. The column explanations are the same as above for the totals.
NOTE: If you decide to use audits, it's important to commit to only making inventory adjustments using the audit rather than regular inventory adjustment through Stock. This is because inventory adjustment between audits are not reflected in the Audit Variance report and can throw off variance totals where there might not otherwise be a difference.
Similarly, discrepancies in prekitting can also cause issues in the variance report. Situations like placing products in a machine/market without prekitting or performing between-audit inventory adjustments can both cause the report to have positive values where there should be negative, or other values to not add up as they should.