Customer Audit Guide

Customer Audits are physical audits at a customer location. They give you the ability to accurately account for assets at customer sites by reconciling customer balances with what was actually found during the audit.

NOTE

TrackAbout Audits are only done at Customer sites. For auditing an internal location see Internal Inventory Audit.

Every Customer Audit has four parts:

 

NOTE

It is important you resolve audits in the same order in which they were completed. Why? To answer that, let's take a look at the following scenario, where timing makes all the difference.

SCENARIO — Prior to the audit, TrackAbout thinks the asset is at Customer B. Assets are scanned at Customer A first, where the asset is found, and then at Customer B, where the asset is not found.

CASE 1 — Audit records are reconciled in the order in which they happened.

If the audit for Customer A is resolved first, it creates an accounting adjustment, taking the asset off of the balance for Customer B. When the audit for Customer B is then resolved, the asset is no longer expected to be at Customer B, so the asset does not get marked as Lost.

CASE 2 — Audit records are not reconciled in the order in which they happened.

If Customer B is reconciled first, the asset gets marked as Lost. When reconciling Customer A, the asset is found, but since that record was before the asset was “lost”, the asset is lost.

Scanning Assets at the Customer Site

The first part of a customer audit is sending a team of one or more to do an inventory of assets at the customer's location(s). In general, the process goes like this:

  1. A team of one or more visits a customer location.

  2. Using their mobile devices, the team goes building by building, room by room, scanning every asset they can find using TrackAbout Mobile 7's Customer Audit action.

    The Customer Audit action creates Customer Audit Records that can be viewed from the TrackAbout Activity page, or in the TrackAbout Dashboard.

    If assets owned by you but which don't have barcodes are found, they can be registered with TrackAbout on-the-spot using the Register New Asset option in Customer Audit.

  3. Once the inventory is done and all mobile units have synced their collected data with TrackAbout, one or more Customer Audit records are created in the system (along with Add New records if any new assets were registered). These records must be grouped and reviewed before reconciliation.

Grouping and Reviewing Audit Records

Before a customer audit can be reconciled, the audit records created during the inventory must be grouped and reviewed.

Open the TrackAbout Dashboard (Regular Maintenance è TrackAbout Dashboard).

 

From the dashboard, resolve all Non-Delivery Records with Unclassified Assets and Collisions before starting the reconciliation.

Failure to resolve these types of issues can cause the audit to be resolved incorrectly.

  • Click Show List to begin resolving Non-Delivery Records with Unclassified Assets issues.

  • Click View Collisions to begin resolving Collisions.

 

Once all non-delivery records with unclassified assets and collisions have been resolved, click Create New Audits to group audit records together for reconciliation by clicking Create New Audits (to the right of Ungrouped Audit Records).

 

This opens the Create New Audit page, which walks you through the grouping and review process.

 

  1. Group Audit Records

    Audit Options

    • If you're starting a new audit reconciliation, give the audit group a name in the Enter a name to create a new grouping field.

    • If you're continuing an existing reconciliation, select an audit grouping from the Attach additional records to an existing audit grouping (choose one) list.

    Search Options

    By default, all ungrouped audit records are listed for selection (below). Narrow the list to only show ungrouped audit records created by selected users or records with a specific name.

    Filter by users — Click to select a user. Hold CTRL and click to select multiple users.

    Search for audits named — Enter a full or partial audit name to list records with matching user-entered names .

    SEARCH — Filter the list.

    Ungrouped Audit Records List

    Select the audit records to group together by selecting them from the Select one or more audit records to be part of this audit grouping list.

    Click NEXT PAGE >. to continue.

     

  2. Choose Parent Customer

    Specify which customer was audited. Enter an ID in the Parent Customer ID field, or click Open Customer Search to search for a customer ID and select it.

    Click NEXT PAGE > to continue.

     

  3. Choose Departments

    Confirm the customer being audited by selecting it, and select any of the customer's departments included in the audit.

    In the case where there are multiple child accounts under one parent account, you can either select all child accounts to reconcile with the parent together, or you can reconcile one child account at a time. There are pros and cons to either option.

    If you audit and reconcile all accounts together:

    • If an expected asset is found, it will stay with the department where TrackAbout last "saw" it before the audit.

    • If there is a surprise find, during the reconciliation you'll have the option to select which department it goes to.

    There is no benefit to having separate audit records for each department.

    If you make a separate audit record for each department, and then reconcile separately:

    • If an expected asset is found, it will stay with the department where TrackAbout last "saw" it before the audit.

    • If there's a surprise find, there's no guess work as to which department it should go to. This may make the results more accurate.

    • However, in the opposite scenario for Not Found assets, the audit resolution may get more complex. Let's say the audit is for parent Parent1 and department Dept1. As per TrackAbout, the asset is at Parent1, but the asset is physically at Dept1.

      The asset will come up as a surprise find for Dept1 (which is good), but the asset will also come up as a Not Found for Parent1. You'll have to make a determination as to whether the asset should be marked as Lost or not by searching through the Asset History to see if it has appeared in an audit record of the parent or a department. In that scenario, it may end up being quite a bit of additional work.

    Both approaches are valid. Doing each department's audit separately may end up being more work, but the end result will be more accurate if done correctly. There is also a risk of not selecting the correct options for Not Founds for assets that have moved across departments.

     

    Click NEXT PAGE > to continue.

     

  4. Summary

    The Incomplete Audit Summary page is where you review a summary of the assets found on the audit records compared to the customer's TrackAbout balance, and then finally tell TrackAbout to reconcile the audit.

    Summary Details

    Expected — How many of each type of asset TrackAbout expected the customer had prior to the audit.

    Found — How many of each type of asset were found during the course of the audit.

    Difference — The difference between how many of each type of asset were expected before the audit, and how many were actually found during the audit.

    Not Found Unique Assets — How many unique assets were expected at the Customer site but were not found during the course of the audit.

    Surprise Finds — The number of assets which were found at the customer site but which weren't recorded as being in the customer's possession prior to the audit.

    After reviewing the summary, click Reconcile This Audit to start the reconciliation.

 

Starting the Reconciliation

When you tell TrackAbout it's time to reconcile the audit, TrackAbout leads you through a series of confirmations that you want the reconciliation to be done.

  1. Begin

    Before beginning, confirm that you are aware that:

    • You are beginning a multi-step process to reconcile a customer audit.

    • Your work will be saved after each step, but you should try to complete the process in one sitting.

    • The process depends on several sources of data, including the asset balances of all the involved customers at the specific date and time you selected for this audit.

    • If you or another user makes changes to past records while you are in this process, the reconciliation may need to be aborted and you may be required to start again.

    Click BEGIN > to confirm you're ready to begin the reconciliation.

    Click < BACK TO SUMMARY if you are not ready to begin the reconciliation.

     

  2. Confirm Syncs

    Next, you are prompted to confirm that all handhelds that might possibly contain records for the customers involved in the audit have been synced.

    Once an audit reconciliation is completed, you may encounter problems if anyone tries to sync devices containing older records.

    Click YES > to confirm all devices are synced.

    Click < NO if you are not ready to begin the reconciliation.

     

  3. Surprise Finds

    Review and confirm the list of barcode numbers that were found on the customer's balance but were not on it before the audit. Any assets that were added as new during the audit are considered surprise finds.

    If there are multiple holders on the audit (e.g. a parent holder and one department), select which holder the asset should go to from the dropdown.

     

    Click CONTINUE > to confirm you've reviewed the list and continue.

    Click < BACK if you are not ready to begin the reconciliation.

     

  4. Not Founds

    Not Founds lists assets that were on the balance but were not found in the audit.

    If there are unique scanned asset not founds, determine how they should be treated.

    • Mark LOST at Customer — Mark the asset as LOST, with the customer in each case recorded as responsible. This removes these asset from the customers' balances. Marking a customer as responsible simply means that this asset will appear on the Lost and Found report on the dashboard whenever it turns up. The report will note that the asset was lost when out to this customer.

    • Leave at Customer — Leaves the assets on the customer’s balance.

    You can select options individually for each asset or set default option for all assets.

    If there are not-scanned assets not found, select the Quantity to Leave On balance from the drop-down list, either ALL or NONE (default).

    Click CONTINUE > to confirm you've selected how not founds should be treated and continue.

    Click < BACK if you are not ready to begin the reconciliation.

     

  5. Final Confirmation

    This is the final step in the audit reconciliation process.

    Click COMPLETE AUDIT RECONCILIATION > to complete the audit and create the records adjusting the customer's balance.

    Click < PREVIOUS PAGE > if you are not ready to complete the reconciliation.

     

What TrackAbout Does When it Reconciles an Audit

Reconciliation creates records adjusting the audited customer's balances. The type of adjustments made depend on the type of discrepancy.

Surprise Finds — Unexpected tracked (scanned) assets are delivered to the holder. If there are multiple customers on the audit, the assets are delivered to the holder selected on the Surprise Finds page. If the holder has any positive DNS of the asset's classification, that DNS is consumed.

Not Founds — Assets that weren't found during the audit are returned from the holder. If the holder has any RNS on balance, this return will consume the RNS (Note: If on the not founds page the person reconciling the audit chose to leave all of the RNS on balance, then the RNS won't be consumed here.) In a separate record after the return, they are marked as lost with either the customer or nobody responsible, depending on the selection made on the Not Found page.

Not Scanneds — After all of the surprise finds and not founds are processed (and consume NS assets), any remaining Not Scanneds are removed from balance unless the user reconciling the audit chose to leave some on balance.

Upon successful reconciliation of the audit, a reconciliation report is generated detailing the results of the audit.

 

Troubleshooting Audits

Consider the following scenario:

  • Start with a brand new customer.

    • Deliver asset 111 to the customer of AssetType A.

    • The barcode is damaged or falls off while there.

    • The asset is returned as a RNS since it couldn't be scanned.

When you do the Customer Audit, you won't find 111 on the balance anymore because it is no longer at the location. When the audit logic tries to reconcile, it sees that there were RNS of that type, so it figures that the missing asset was one of those RNS and just marks it as returned, rather than returning it and marking it as lost.

Customizing TrackAbout

TrackAbout is highly customizable to meet specific business needs. If you are interested in customizing TrackAbout to better meet your needs, please contact TrackAbout Support.