Stock-taking or inventory checking is the physical verification of the quantities and condition of items held in an inventory

Inventory

Inventory means a list compiled for some formal purpose, such as the details of an estate going to probate, or the contents of a house let furnished. This remains the prime meaning in British English...

 or warehouse

Warehouse

A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They usually have loading docks to load and unload...

. This may be done to provide an audit

Audit

The general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting...

 of existing stock valuation

Stock valuation

In financial markets, stock valuation is the method of calculating theoretical values of companies and their stocks. The main use of these methods is to predict future market prices, or more generally potential market prices, and thus to profit from price movement – stocks that are judged...

. It is also the source of stock discrepancy information.

Stock-taking may be performed as an intensive annual check or may be done continuously by means of a cycle count

Cycle count

A cycle count is an inventory management procedure where a small subset of inventory is counted on any given day. Cycle counts contrast with traditional physical inventory in that physical inventory stops operation at a facility while all items are counted at one time...

.