Cycle counting is the practice of counting a small, rotating subset of your inventory frequently, instead of counting everything once or twice a year. It replaces the annual "full physical count" that shuts the warehouse down for a weekend.
Why bother? Because the annual count is theatre. By the time you close the books on the annual count, the numbers are already drifting. A good cycle-count program keeps inventory accuracy at 99%+ year-round, which means you never have to pull the handle on the "close the warehouse, bring everyone in on Saturday" event.
The three cycle-count schedules worth knowing.
1. ABC cycle count. You split your SKUs into A (top 20% by velocity, or top 20% by dollar value), B (next 30%), and C (bottom 50%). A gets counted weekly, B monthly, C quarterly. Good default for most distributors.
2. Zone count. You divide the warehouse into zones and count one zone per day. Works when you have a big building and a fixed floor layout.
3. Exception-driven count. Any SKU that shows a variance, a negative on-hand, or a receipt-without-sale gets queued for a next-day recount. Combine this with ABC and you have most cases covered.
What CloudPeak does. Auto-schedules the count list each morning. Sends it to the Zebra. Writes variance to the audit log. Flags anything outside your category tolerance. Holds the adjustment for approval if the variance is > $500. That's it — no surprises, no cleverness.
What CloudPeak doesn't do. It doesn't count for you. You still need humans with scanners.