Everything between the export out and the file you post back.

Portal · Parts tab

Load your parts

Export a part list from whatever you run, save it as CSV, and pick the layout that matches its columns. The portal previews what it read before anything is saved, so a file with the columns in the wrong order is caught on screen rather than halfway through a count.

• Parts belong to the company, not to a site. Load them once however many locations you count.
• A part with no barcode still works. The operator keys the part number instead. What you cannot do is count something that is in neither list — see the next point.
• An unknown barcode is refused at the point of scan. That is the feature, not a limitation: the operator is standing at the rack and can deal with it, rather than you finding out next week that 60 counts were against a number nothing recognizes.
• Loading replaces wholesale. A second load is the whole catalog again, not an addition — so export the full list, not the changes.

Portal · Sites tab, then Bin Locations

Create your sites, then load their bins

A site is a location, not a building. Reno DC is one site whether it is one shed or five, with a mezzanine and a yard. Everything standing on it shares one set of bin locations and is counted as one thing, because that is how a crew works it: one gate, one stocktake, one day.

A site has a short code an operator types at sign-in and a longer name for you to read on reports. Bin locations belong to one site — A1 at Reno is a different shelf from A1 at Memphis, and the portal keeps them apart. A few thousand locations on one site is ordinary; ten thousand is fine.

• Every row loads whatever its length. These are your racks, not our field sizes.
• Add and update matches on the bin code and leaves anything not in the file alone. Replace loads the file as the whole list for that site, and anything not in it stops scanning — the portal tells you how many that is before it does it.
• If your racks are not labeled yet, the portal prints label sheets from this list — fourteen to a US Letter or A4 page, each with the code as text and as a barcode. Print at 100%, not “fit to page”: scaling the bars is the usual reason a printed barcode will not read.

Portal · Users tab

Add your operators

• An operator gets a short username and a PIN of exactly four digits. The scanner's password box offers a number pad, so letters cannot be typed on a touch-only device — four digits is what the hardware can actually accept.
• An administrator gets a password of at least eight characters, because theirs is typed into a browser and reaches everything.
• Operators are not tied to a site. They name the site they are standing in when they sign in, so the same person can count at two locations on the same day.
• Add everyone before the day, including the people you are not sure will turn up. An account costs nothing and creating one at 6am does not go well.

Portal · Stocktakes tab

Open the count

A count is one counting event at one site. It can stay open for a week and still be one count. An operator cannot start one — you create it and activate it here, and the scanner checks what is running every time somebody taps Stocktake.

• One open count per site. Two at the same site would mean a scanner asking “what am I counting into” and getting two answers.
• Counting several locations? One count each, running at the same time, each with its own reports. One purchase covers them all and extra sites add nothing to the price — scanners are counted in total, not per site. Say how many sites when you buy, so the license is set for them.
• With nothing open, the scanners still look parts and bins up. Useful the day before for checking the labels went on the right racks.

On the floor

Scan the bin. Scan the part. Key the count.

Three actions, then the next one. That is the whole job and it does not change all day.

• Piles of the same thing? Scan/Increment mode — every trigger pull adds one, and nobody keys a quantity at all.
• Counts add up, they do not overwrite. One part can sit in two places in a big bin, so a second count of the same part in the same bin is a real thing. The scanner asks whether it is an addition or a correction rather than guessing.
• An empty bin gets marked empty. That is different from a bin nobody reached, and the reports keep them apart — one is an answer, the other is a question.
• Every count carries the operator, the device and the time. Nobody has to remember who did aisle 4.
• An operator can correct or withdraw their own counts and nobody else's.
• The scanner stores nothing. Every count goes straight to the portal, so a count that did not arrive is reported to the operator while they are still standing at the rack. That needs Wi-Fi or a hotspot where you count. A dead spot is not silent.

Portal · Reports tab

Watch it fill in

This is the part that changes how a count day goes, and it is worth someone sitting on it rather than counting.

• Totals by bin, by part across the whole count, and by operator.
• A bar graph comparing operators, and any one operator's counts in detail.
• The raw counts in the order they happened — the day as it actually ran.
• What is still missing: parts never counted, bins nobody scanned into, and bins marked empty. The first two are the list you work from while people are still in the building.

Send somebody back for a recount before they go home, not after. A missed aisle found at 4pm is twenty minutes; the same aisle found on Monday is another count day.

Portal · Stocktakes tab

Close it

Closing is deliberate and nothing does it for you. Until it is closed the count is still open at that site, and the portal will not let you clear a company's data while any count is still running.

• A withdrawn count stays on the record, struck through. It is out of every total, but the row does not vanish — so the trail shows a figure was taken back, by whom, and when.
• A closed count can still be reported on for as long as you keep the account. Reporting on last year's count is the ordinary case, not an exception.

Portal · Reports tab → Export CSV

Export and post

Every report is on screen, printable, and exportable — the same columns in all three, so what you export cannot quietly differ from what you read.

• Part number and barcode are separate columns, because your accounting system wants one of them and not usually the other.
• Barcodes are written so Excel keeps the leading zero. A barcode that loses its first digit on the way into a spreadsheet is a different barcode.
• The file is UTF-8 with CRLF line endings, which is what Excel opens without mangling anything.
• Dates on an American account read mm/dd/yy.

What happens next depends on what you run. QuickBooks Online has its own page, including the screen most people end up on and the button on it that deletes an hour of typing without asking.