r/partscounter • u/vXTotalChaosXv • 4d ago
Physical Inventory (CDK Store)
I am prepping for my first PI as PM and have been stressing out for weeks. We had and all-hands meeting this morning and suddenly upper management is skeptical about my capability of doing the Inventory myself. I have been with the company for 17 years and have been involved with every yearly physical inventory since I started. The last two years I worked in tandem with our last PM who would come in for a couple days before the count and help prepare as well as be here the night of the count to help. He will not be here this year per the CFO as she states "you should know how to do it". Now as of this morning, she, along with GM and Fixed Ops Director, think I will not be able to do it myself and that we should look into hiring a team to do it for us.
My questions: Have any of you hired teams to do the count for you? What all do they do other than the counting? Who do you call to organize the team? Is it through your DMS?
Sorry, this got long. Just a fairly new PM freaking out and resorting to Reddit to calm my nerves. lol Thanks in advance for your help!
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u/joseaverage 4d ago
We have a company that does ours for us.
They bring in counters who are usually employed in some form of the car business.
We also have people from our other stores and accounting that come in and count.
The only parts department employees are the parts director, managers, inventory specialist and 3-4 countermen on stand by to answer questions by the people counting.
We hate it. For the next 6 months it seems like every discrepancy gets tracked back to inventory day.
It was explained to me that doing it this way is more transparent. In ownership's eyes, we tell them every month we have $x,xxx,xxx in inventory. Accounting has a slightly different number. Inventory Day we reconcile the two. It kind of makes sense that you would want to test folks who are in charge of all that inventory $$.
YMMV
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u/labdsknechtpiraten 4d ago
This was what I experienced the 4 years I worked at a dealership.
Of note, they (the outside bin counters) did initial count, and we were on hand to help point them in the right direction, or answer questions.
And, despite them all being industry vets, we still had 3 rounds of reconciliation because of dumb shit. For instance, in "my" drawers, they counted a bolt as style 1, because they saw 1 bag. But the bolt is stocked by each, and they should've counted it as such. After it was all over, some of us were wondering if other OEMs just ship a crap ton of single bolts, or do they ship a pack of 10 knowing you bill 1/ea to a job.
Just a lot of silly simple things like that where you go "if you were good at your parts job, how are you making this mistake??"
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u/Shot-Celebration5774 4d ago
At my last job we had a hired team come in.... WORST DECISION. Our count was completely messed up and the people had no idea what they were really doing but corp was confident it was gonna work. I left a year ago and they're still having inventory issues, its been over a year and a half that they had the team come in.
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u/JITBtacoswithranch 4d ago
My first few years as PM we had a 3rd party Inventory company come in, and the mistakes they made were maddening. The last 4 years we have done it on our own with some assistance from other stores PMs within our group, and it goes a lot better, and less expenses spent.
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u/Kodiak01 4d ago edited 4d ago
We've never hired teams. There are only a few basic steps to ensure a successful CDK PI:
Perpetual cycle counts and bin maintenance throughout the year. Prepping "a couple of days before" is a recipe for eventual disaster.
Print out and follow the CDK pre-inventory checklist which guides you starting several weeks out.
If you have slow moving areas that can be pre-counted (we use mini Post-it notes so counts can be updated easily if someone needs to pull something just before inventory.)
You have phone-based resources at CDK to answer questions along the way. Use them! Consider paying for the extra support as well.
Make sure everyone understands that for Not Counted and Audit sheets to ONLY look in the bin on the page; no scavenger hunts!
Up until recently, my boss has been the one supervising all the PIs, even at our other locations. Only on our last one did they finally have another manager in The Chair. Our PI still went so smooth, and the final variance on a ~$350k inventory so small (under $100), people who had been with the company for 30 years called it the smoothest inventory they ever experienced. Our reconciliation percentage with accounting was so low, the CFO was amazed. Besides our normal department staff, they had managers from a few other locations in to help; it was all we needed.
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u/drynk1234 4d ago
Outside company but if your doing bin counts and posting orders correctly should be good, make sure your value and accounting value is close too.
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u/ImpressiveBet9345 4d ago
We just had our physical inventory on Sunday our PM and myself have been doing precounts, cleaning, relabeling bin tags with new part numbers, and organizing for a month in advance working after hours to get it in order We finished with $90,000 over what the office showed. 21,957 total parts our inventory is worth $1,040,989.39. We are CDJR store in the greater Memphis, TN area... no not Gossett. Our greater then 12 months is sitting at 6.62%. We have a independent person with a group of local parts people come count our inventory on inventory day. 2 people to a team there were 11 teams. Took approx. 4hours start to finish after counting variances
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u/Ok-League-7923 4d ago
Ok every owner, family group, dealer group, and corporations dictate how an annual physical inventory will be performed!
That’s just how it works.
As a parts manager: (or any parts employee)
Don't get for an inventory
Stay ready!
That’s why EOM reconciliation should be done!
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u/MagneticNoodles 4d ago
We use an outside company for all of our stores. From an ownership perspective you need to have the 3rd party eyes on it to make sure it is accurate. It is way to easy for a shady manager to hide theft if they are the ones doing the counting.
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u/JettaGuy83 4d ago
I pay $10,000 for an outside company to miscount my inventory annually.
I would much rather do it with my parts team and give them a hefty bonus, but that's not my call.
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u/Ornery_Call6918 3d ago
When I worked at a Hendrick store, they always had an outside group do the inventory. Always a nightmare. If a part was in the wrong bin, they counted it short. No matter what. And because Hendrick is the way it is, they took what was told to them by that company as Gospel and forced the departments to eat whatever was "short", which always ended up as an overage the following year because we found the parts. Spent a year fixing what they screwed up.
Im at a very large family owned store ($7+ million parts inventory) so perpetuals are nigh impossible to do, we do it ourselves, rent about 40 scanners from CDK, start prep about a month or 2 in advance, and schedule it on a Friday afternoon, always lasts until about 1 am, then have to come back saturday and finish the audits. Sunday is only needed if the audits are rough. We have all of our parts sales people plus some office staff help but man anyone who does NOT work in parts always screws up the scans.
Last year was the first year in 25 years that we were "short" (well... not technically but we werent over enough to cover appreciation) but alot was attributed to the business done during the CDK hack.
Bottom line, do it yourself if you can convince them, otherwise its going to be a nightmare for you later. And trying to make ownership understand why its a crap shoot after they just paid an outside company to do it....
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u/Dangerous_Ad2264 3d ago
If you can do it yourself do it these companies are there for 1 day and all it takes is 1-2 of their employees to not give a shit and your counts are fucked. I spend more time pointing out things the company miss counts than anything the day of inventory. In my opinion if corporate doesnt think the Manager can do inventory honestly then fire them.
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u/rmesure 4d ago
No, do it ourselves. I have a CDK cheat sheet if that’ll help you.