Physical Inventory (Farmin out)?

[pkwalsh]

We are in the process of having an outside company come in to inventory our three stores, VW, Volvo, and Jeep Chrysler. We have always done them ourselves, but companys accounting firm wants an outside job done. Less than three weeks before the big weekend, I will let you know the outcome.

[GLEvans]

I highly reccommend just hiring an outside auditor that is experienced. We have been using one for five years and the process has NEVER been easier. She has organized the inventory, run the reports, and personally checked 100% of the discrepencies (with me in tow). After she is satified with the actual count, she will have me bring her a list of the parts claims, damages, etc. Then she will audit the parts accounting in the business office. Last year, we were off $72.00. We foung gold in her 3 years ago when she found the accounting dept. did not post roughly $22,000 in parts price increases. That brought us down to being less than $400 off. Even our comptroller didn't find this. (I totally forgot about it even though it shows up in my monthly reports.) She makes me look good! Unfortunately she is retiring next year. She cost alot less than an inventory service (my guys and the parts guys from our other store did the counting). The last time we had an inventory service do our inventory (6 years ago) they screwed up so bad. I found 4 complete bulk bins that were not counted at all, discrepencies were completely discounted, bin numbers were changed, and we were off $60,000. Trying to figure out all the problems took time - the inventory service just did the physical count - that our comptroller and book keepers tried to do in their spare time. Finally our CPA firm said to do another and they would audit it.
The next inventory we were only off $1200. Go figure.