Not all inventory drifts at the same speed
A part that sells once a year sits on its shelf, undisturbed, and its count stays right. A part you add, pick, transfer, and adjust ten times a week gets handled constantly — and every one of those touches is a chance for the count to slip. So if you’re going to spend twenty minutes verifying stock, the smart place to spend it isn’t a random shelf. It’s the parts that have been moving.
That’s the whole idea behind usage-based cycle counting — and it’s the fastest way to catch drift before it turns into an oversell.
What is usage-based cycle counting?
A full cycle count walks the whole warehouse location by location, so everything gets verified eventually. Usage-based cycle counting (the industry also calls it high-touch counting) flips the selection: instead of counting by location, it counts by activity — the more a part has moved, the sooner it comes up for a check. It’s a cousin of velocity-based counting, which prioritizes the fastest sellers, except usage-based keys on every kind of movement, not just sales.
We’ve decided to call this the High-Turn Inventory Check in Ordovee. Same idea, plainer name: check the high-turnover parts, often, because that’s where errors are most expensive and most likely.
How Ordovee runs it
Open the Activity Audit page (Utility → Reports → Audit & Counting) and choose how many items you want on one report — 25 items usually fits on one page and takes about 15–20 minutes to count. ODV pulls the most recently changed SKUs straight from the ledger and prints them in a grid.
Unlike a full cycle count, there’s no bookmark. Every time you generate the report, you get the current list of high-turn items. Run it weekly and you’re always checking what’s been moving that week.
What the report looks like
Each tile shows a SKU, a short title, the item’s location, the expected quantity, and a blank for the counted number — plus a QR code in the corner.
Scan that QR code with your phone and Ordovee opens the item record directly — no searching, no typing the SKU. That’s the shortcut when a count is off and you want to record the correction on the spot, or when a truncated title on the sheet needs the full item detail.
Found a mismatch? Use the ADJUST action to enter the real quantity with a reason. It writes to the ledger with your name and a timestamp, and the reservation and order flow pick up the change immediately.
Why this one matters
Fast-moving SKUs are where drift compounds. A small error on a part that sells once a month might sit unnoticed for a year. The same error on a part that sells twice a week becomes an oversell within a month — a cancelled order, a bad review, a refund. Running a High-Turn Inventory Check on a regular cadence catches the errors on exactly the items where a wrong count costs you fastest.
It’s the perfect complement to the full Cycle Count: the cycle count guarantees everything gets verified over time, and the usage-based check makes sure the fast movers never wait that long.
Is usage-based counting the same as ABC analysis?
Not quite. ABC analysis ranks items by value and counts the high-value class more often. Usage-based counting ranks by movement — every add, pick, or adjustment is a chance for a count to drift, so the most-handled parts surface first, whatever they’re worth. You also skip building and maintaining a value-class matrix.
→ Cover the whole warehouse over time: Cycle Counting in Ordovee → Compare the methods (and where a full physical inventory fits): Physical Inventory vs. Cycle Count → See how every count ties back to the record: Ledger-based inventory → Want to set a counting cadence for your shop? Let’s talk
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