# Cycle counting

> Cycle counting is counting a few products often, on a rota, instead of counting everything once a year.

- Source: https://storestandards.com/glossary/cycle-counting/
- Updated: 2026-08-14
- Author: Nia Chambers, Product, Store Standards

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Twenty lines on a Tuesday morning. Different twenty next week.

## Choosing what to count

Not at random. Weight it by what costs you money to get wrong:

- Your twenty fastest sellers, every week
- Anything with a value over a threshold you set, monthly
- Anything that threw up an
  [inventory adjustment](https://storestandards.com/glossary/inventory-adjustment/) last month
- Everything else, once or twice a year

A line that sells forty a week can drift forty units before anyone notices. A
line that sells one a quarter cannot.

## Why it beats the annual count

A [stocktake](https://storestandards.com/glossary/stocktake/) tells you the total is wrong. A cycle
count tells you which line went wrong and roughly when, because you counted
it three weeks ago and it was right.

That second fact is the one you can act on.

## Where it goes wrong

The count gets done, the number gets corrected, and nobody asks why. Next
month the same line is out by the same amount, because the process that
created the gap is still running.

Correcting the number without fixing the cause is the most common version of
this, and it is why
[stock counts drift](https://storestandards.com/blog/why-shopify-stock-counts-drift/) even in stores
that count regularly. Write the reason down every time, and after a month the
pattern names itself.

## Related terms

- [Stocktake](https://storestandards.com/glossary/stocktake/): A stocktake is counting every product you hold and correcting the system to match what is really on the shelves.
- [Stock accuracy](https://storestandards.com/glossary/stock-accuracy/): Stock accuracy is how often the number on screen matches the number on the shelf, counted line by line rather than in total.
- [Inventory adjustment](https://storestandards.com/glossary/inventory-adjustment/): An inventory adjustment is a manual change to a stock number, made when what the system says does not match the shelf.