Stocktake checklist: free printable PDF and Excel
17 steps in three phases: before count day, count day and after the count. It is the inventory count checklist we would want on the clipboard: it covers the questions shop owners keep asking, such as what happens to items nobody counted, and what to give the accountant. A practical checklist, not accounting advice; check the rules for your country with your accountant.
Download the checklist as a printable PDF (A4, one page, tick boxes and sign-off) or the Excel version (type x in the Done column and it counts steps done and left). Free, no email asked.
Before count day
- Date set and told to staff and your accountant; last delivery and last sale numbers noted.
- One count lead named; areas numbered (shelf run, room, bin range); one blank count sheet printed per area.
- Stock list exported with SKU, location, system quantity and unit cost; the copy saved and not edited.
- Returns, damaged goods, consignment and sold-not-collected items set aside and labelled.
- Recount rule written down before counting (units or percent), so nobody decides it after seeing the numbers.
- Location names fixed, so every sheet line uses the same bin name as the system.
Count day
- Receiving and selling frozen, or every movement during the count written on a list.
- Blind count: expected quantity left off the sheet; numbers written, not tick marks.
- Pairs: one counts aloud, one writes; initials and time on each sheet.
- Every location checked, including backrooms, drawers, display and under counters; counted shelves tagged.
- Damaged, expired and obsolete stock on their own lines.
After the count
- Counts typed next to the frozen system quantity; difference worked out for every line.
- Lines not counted marked NOT COUNTED. They are not zero: find them or count them before anything is written back.
- Every line over the recount rule counted again by a different person.
- Differences valued at cost; shrink total and the categories that lost most written down.
- Stock record adjusted once, from recounted figures, with a reason on each adjustment (for example: count, damaged, theft suspected).
- Final stock list with quantities and values handed to the accountant; count sheets kept.
The one rule shop owners get wrong
An item that was not counted is not an item that is zero. Shopify merchants ask this again and again (“What happens if a product is not scanned, will it be updated to zero?”, community.shopify.com, 2022). Mark such lines NOT COUNTED, find them, and only then adjust the stock record.
Also free: the printable inventory count sheet, the count day procedure and the year-end stocktake checklist.
Checked against Shopify's help pages on 2 November 2026.
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