Asked before every count.

Not if you have Zebra Android scanners on Android 5.1 or newer. Tell us the model number and we'll tell you whether we've run it — and if we haven't, we'll say so. If you don't have any, Zebra's reseller locator will find you one; we'll spec the right model first, free.

No. You pay per count — a license for each scanner counting at once, for seven days. Count once a year, pay once a year. If you count every month, ask about an annual license instead.

Yes, and it's free — no card, no commitment. Send us your parts and bins and we'll set up an account with your own warehouse in it rather than a sample one. Everything works: load the data, add your operators, count on your own scanners, read the reports. It runs for 30 days. A thousand scans per count, and every report shows twenty rows — on screen, printed and in the CSV alike — with the real totals beside them, so you read 20 of 347 rather than a number we invented.

Every scan is banked to the portal as it happens; nothing is stored on the device. A lost scanner is a lost scanner — the count is intact. The portal and its database are in New York — managed PostgreSQL with automated backups and point-in-time recovery over a rolling seven days. Each company's data is separated by keys the database itself enforces, so a cross-company reference is refused by Postgres rather than merely avoided by the application. Closed counts stay reportable for later audits.

Every count is a live call to the portal. If it doesn't arrive, the operator is told immediately, while they're still standing at the rack, and that count is not recorded — they scan it again once they're back in coverage. Nothing accepted is ever lost, and nothing is silently missing. It does mean you need Wi-Fi everywhere you count; test coverage before the day.

Two CSV files — parts and bin locations — uploaded through the portal. Your browser parses them and shows the row count, the first few rows and any lines it skipped before anything is saved. Parts are part number, barcode and description; bins are a location and a description. A header row is optional. If you can export a spreadsheet, you can load Stocktakes Online. If it needs tidying first, send it over and we'll tell you what to change — that costs nothing.

No. A camera is not a scan engine — a Zebra reads the moment the trigger is pulled and keeps doing it in a freezer with gloves on. Operators log in with a short username and a PIN they can type wearing gloves.

One CSV: Site Name, Bin Location, Part Number, Barcode, Part Description, Count, User Name, Date, Time, Withdrawn. Barcodes are wrapped so Excel keeps the leading zeros. Plus totals, gaps, empty bins and scans-by-user, on screen or exported.

Operators can amend their own quantity or withdraw the count on the device. A withdrawn count leaves every total immediately, but the record stays for the administrator to see. Scan the same part in the same bin twice and the device asks: second pile, or a correction to the first? Two operators counting the same bin show up as a discrepancy in the reports, with names attached.

Scan the bin, then type 0 where the part number goes. The reports then tell "checked and empty" apart from "nobody went there" — which are very different answers on count night.

Three modes: Scan/Count (bin, part, key the quantity), Scan/Increment (every trigger pull adds one — type to override), and Check (look up a part or a bin without recording anything).

Yes. A site is a location, and everything on it counts as part of it — sheds, a mezzanine, the yard are not separate sites. Each location is its own counting event, and they run at the same time, each with its own bin locations and its own reports. Scanners are counted in total rather than per site, so twenty scanners across two sites is twenty, and extra sites add nothing to the price. Tell us how many you are counting so the license is set to cover them.

QuickBooks Online has no barcode scanning of its own, and its inventory adjustment screen takes a quantity typed one line at a time — so you count on the scanner and Stocktakes Online gives you a count file in the layout your import tool expects, one line per item with the new quantity, dated for the count. The file has the part number and the counted quantity, which is what an import tool asks for, and we'll help you get it into the shape yours wants. We don't post into QuickBooks for you.

No. Stocktakes Online counts stock. That's the whole job, and it's why it takes an hour to learn, not a week.

The person who built it — and the time difference works in your favor. A count running 5 pm to midnight Eastern is 9 am to 4 pm in Sydney over your winter and 7 am to 2 pm over your summer — an ordinary working day here either way, and year-end falls in the easier half, so the count-day line is answered 5 pm to midnight Eastern, weekends included. That is exactly when American warehouses count, and when most vendors' staff have gone home. Outside those hours, email reaches us any time and we answer it Sydney business hours.