Executive Guide¶
U.S. General Accounting Office. (2002). Executive Guide: Best Practices in Achieving Consistent, Accurate Physical Counts of Inventory and Related Property. GAO-02-447G.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Mechanisms¶
- Inventory Count Reconciliation
- Its strength is grounding the record in observable reality: when the shelf is the thing that ships, resetting the database to a careful physical count restores an inventory people can actually plan and promise against, and treating variance as a diagnostic — not just a correction
This sourceTreats physical-count reconciliation as the basis for reliable inventory records and variance research as a way to identify and correct underlying control failures.
- Its strength is grounding the record in observable reality: when the shelf is the thing that ships, resetting the database to a careful physical count restores an inventory people can actually plan and promise against, and treating variance as a diagnostic — not just a correction
- Inventory Reconciliation Workflow
- Its classic misuse is plugging: adjusting the book to match the count without investigating why they diverged, so the record looks clean while the leak continues and the write-off quietly absorbs shrinkage
This sourceIdentifies as plugging the practice of adjusting inventory records to match a count without investigating the discrepancy.
- Its classic misuse is plugging: adjusting the book to match the count without investigating why they diverged, so the record looks clean while the leak continues and the write-off quietly absorbs shrinkage
- Operational Reconciliation Workflow
- It is the right process wherever two records of the same reality must be kept in agreement over time — inventory, cash, sub-ledgers, inter-system data — and it is the standard discipline behind account reconciliation and cycle counting.
This sourceGAO describes cycle counting as periodically counting portions of inventory and comparing physical counts with inventory records to research and reconcile differences.
- It is the right process wherever two records of the same reality must be kept in agreement over time — inventory, cash, sub-ledgers, inter-system data — and it is the standard discipline behind account reconciliation and cycle counting.
- Stock–Flow Balance Reconciliation
- The classic misuse is booking a persistent discrepancy as routine inventory shrinkage
This sourceRecommends promptly investigating persistent inventory discrepancies and adjustment trends, including possible fraud or theft.
- The classic misuse is booking a persistent discrepancy as routine inventory shrinkage
Verification¶
Does it exist? Not checked yet. This entry carries no identifier to resolve. It was extracted from the citation as written in the article, normalized, and deduplicated against the rest of the registry.
Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 4 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 2 other ways.
- https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-02-447g.pdf ×1
- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-763G/pdf/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-763G.pdf ×1
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