Specialty expertise planning, executing, and completing statistical inventory counts — end to end, partnering with your operations teams and coordinating with your external auditors. Clients have ranged from a high-growth startup that needed its first-audit valuation model to companies with inventory exceeding $1 billion.
Non-attest services only. We support your counts and your models on your side of the table — we are never your auditor.
Dreading the annual physical? Counts running past a day? More inventory than anyone could count wall-to-wall in one or two — and a full physical demands more staff than you can spare? That's exactly what statistical counts are for: prove the population with a representative sample instead of counting everything.
Because the day itself is expensive: operations mobilized, the Big 4 on site, one key employee out sick and the whole day at risk — and a failed count costs far more than a well-run one. We lead the count end to end, materiality through final PBC, so the expensive day happens once, stays as small as your controls allow, and holds up.
First statistical count, first audit, or a new location coming online — we design the program from scratch: population, materiality, sampling, instructions, and the auditor conversation your management team owns.
Already counting but it's painful, slow, or barely passing? We take over execution leadership — same count, run tighter and documented better, so it's calmer on the floor and cleaner in the audit.
Full wall-to-wall counts can move to statistical counts — and, with present and functioning controls, potentially to auditor-relied cycle counts with no year-end statistical count at all. We've managed programs that made that move.
Materiality calculation through the last PBC — one team, every inventory-area responsibility covered.
Materiality calculation, population definition and cleanup, location strategy, freeze and cutoff protocols, count instructions — and a readiness check on whether your records can support statistical sampling before anyone counts anything.
End-to-end management of the count itself, partnering with your operations teams on the floor and coordinating with your external auditors throughout — sampling design, reproducible selections, recounts, and exception handling in real time.
Counted-versus-perpetual reconciliation, misstatement projection with visible formulas, root-cause analysis of differences — and every inventory-area PBC completed and delivered in the form Big 4 audit teams expect.
Each step down this path makes count day smaller, cheaper, and less disruptive — when the controls support it.
Everything counted, operations paused, everyone mobilized. Sometimes necessary — usually the most expensive way to prove a number that better design could prove for less.
A representative sample proves the population: less floor time, less disruption, documented confidence — with results your auditors can reperform.
With present and functioning controls, auditors can rely on a well-run cycle count program — no year-end statistical count at all. We have managed cycle count programs that earned exactly that reliance.
Most companies run on a handful of critical spreadsheets built years ago — macro-heavy, fragile, understood by one person, expensive to maintain. We rebuild them into systems.
One critical model, fixed scope: macro and dependency inventory, fragility and key-person risk scoring, a quantified maintenance-cost baseline, and a rebuild-or-refactor recommendation. The memo doubles as the spreadsheet-risk documentation your auditors keep asking about.
Rebuilt on modern, native Excel architecture — staged queries instead of macros, parameters instead of hardcodes, control totals at every stage, and a tie-out tab proving outputs match source. Old and new run in parallel until every difference is explained in writing.
A model manual your team can run without us: data lineage, refresh procedure, parameter guide, and known limits. Optional ongoing maintenance so the model never rots back into a black box.
Counting proves what exists — valuation decides what it's worth. We build and maintain the models behind both: valuation and reserve analyses — lower-of-cost-or-market and obsolescence — on the same tie-to-source standard, and LIFO, which tariff-driven cost inflation has put back on the table for inventory-heavy businesses.
A grounded estimate of what a LIFO election is actually worth for your inventory profile — before you commit to anything.
The LIFO calculation model — pooling structure, index approach, and layer computations — built to be auditable and maintainable, and coordinated with your tax preparer, who owns the return positions.
Recurring yearly computation and a documentation package that keeps the model, the layers, and the support tying out — year after year.
And there's no leverage pyramid here: the person who designs your count runs the program and sits in every auditor conversation — while your operations and local teams handle the floor, the way they should.
Since 2021 we have led global statistical inventory counts for a client whose inventory exceeded $1 billion across many product lines — materiality, sample-size calculation and sample selection, execution leadership with operations, auditor coordination, and every inventory-area PBC — with work product accepted by the client's Big 4 auditor.
We have designed and advised on new inventory valuation models accepted by Big 4 audit teams — from a high-growth startup's first-audit model to a rebuilt LIFO model that replaced a failing Big 4-built original and has run in production since.
We have managed cycle count programs effective enough that the auditor relied on them instead of requiring year-end statistical counts. Fluent in the audit analytics tools your auditors use, including ACL and IDEA. Everything we deliver is built to be checked — working systems that tie to source, and pass audit.
Engagements are billed time and materials unless contracted otherwise; scope and fees are agreed in writing before work begins. Restricted-use consulting deliverables; non-attest services only.