Why the local accountant's 1C balance differs from the warehouse

When a manager from Turkey asks about stock, three different answers come back. The storekeeper counts 4,700 metres, the local accountant's 1C says 5,000 metres, and the Excel file at head office shows yet another figure. Nobody is wrong; each of them is measuring something different. To close the gap you first have to separate what each figure describes.

Three different balances

• Physical balance: the goods standing on the racks right now. Found by counting.
• Warehouse record: the storekeeper's receipts-and-issues book or spreadsheet. Written the moment goods move.
• Accounting balance: the balance in 1C, built from the date documents are posted. It changes when an invoice or delivery note is entered.

These three are not the same at every moment, and a good part of any difference is a timing difference rather than an error. Say 200 metres of fabric leave the warehouse at 17:00 on Friday; the storekeeper records it on Friday and the accountant posts it on Monday. Someone counting on Friday evening and checking against 1C finds 200 metres "missing", and on Monday the difference closes by itself. There is no error, only two days between two documents.

The five most common causes

1. An unposted issue. The shipment has gone, but the invoice or delivery note will be keyed into 1C the next day or at the start of the week.
2. Goods in transit. A shipment from Turkey has been received in accounting but has not yet entered the warehouse (or the other way round).
3. Material at a subcontractor. Fabric was sent to a sewing subcontractor; it is not in the warehouse, but accounting still shows it as stock.
4. Two records for one product. Two items were opened under a Russian, Uzbek or Turkish name, each with a different balance.
5. A unit mismatch. The same item moved in metres in one place and in kg in another. Because suppliers work in kg and customers in metres, this cause is especially common in textiles.

Back-dated corrections and negative balances belong on this list as well, but for a start these five explain most differences.

Breaking the difference apart

An illustrative case: 5,000 metres in 1C, 4,700 metres counted; the difference is 300 metres. Taken apart, with the document number written next to each part:

• 220 metres: shipments already issued, with the document to be posted tomorrow;
• 50 metres: given to production as a sample, no slip;
• 30 metres: unexplained, a genuine shortage.

220 + 50 + 30 = 300. So to say "300 metres lost" would be wrong: the genuine shortage is 30 metres and the rest is delay and gaps in the paperwork. When the accountant and the storekeeper look at this table together, the argument shifts from "who made the mistake" to "why was the document posted late".

Explaining it to head office in one sentence

Management's first question is often "how much have we lost?" With the table above the answer can be put like this: "There is a 300-metre difference between the records and the count; 270 metres come from unposted documents and samples without slips, 30 metres from a genuine shortage, and each has an owner and a date." A sentence like that carries both the figure and the fix. Saying only "300 metres short" creates needless alarm.

A weekly reconciliation routine

You can narrow the gap without waiting for a count. Keep the meeting short: the warehouse lead, the accountant and, where there is one, the person who liaises with head office give it fifteen minutes. Who posts which document, who proposes the correction and who approves it should be written down in advance. If roles are unclear, every difference goes round from person to person.

• once a week, compare the two balances at the same cut-off time;
• take the list of "issued but unposted documents" from the storekeeper and hand it to the accountant;
• write the reason for the delay next to every late document on the list;
• report items with negative balances separately;
• at month end, run one last check before closing.

In short

Once the three balances are brought to the same cut-off time, the genuine shortage is often only a part of the total difference; the rest is solved by document discipline. StockSystem places the counted quantity next to the balance in 1C, Excel or your ERP, sorts the differences into unposted slips, wrong items and genuine shortages, and prepares a correction list in the import layout of your system.