Pictured above: two bays of V3000 racking viewed along the aisle, from our project archive (V3-2), with the bays still empty. A stocktake walks every beam level of every bay like these, so how easy each level is to see, reach and read decides how long the count takes and how much of it you can trust.

Stocktake day is when a racking layout gets judged by people who did not design it. Someone with a clipboard or a scanner walks the aisles, and within an hour they know which parts of the warehouse were planned for counting and which were planned only for storing.

Most racking decisions are made for storage and picking: pallet positions, aisle widths, beam loads. Counting is rarely mentioned at the quotation stage, yet it is the one job that touches every position in the building. This article is about the layout choices that make a count quick, honest and safe, and the ones that quietly make it none of those. You can check most of them in your own warehouse this week, before the next count is called.

Selective racking is the easiest system to count, and the others trade that away

Selective racking gives 100 per cent pallet selectivity: every pallet is directly accessible from the aisle. For a count, that means every pallet can be seen, read and, if need be, pulled out for checking without moving any other pallet. Everything that makes selective racking flexible for picking makes it straightforward to count.

The denser systems trade some of that away, and the trade shows up on count day rather than at purchase.

• Double-deep. The back pallet is blocked by the front one. From the aisle you see the front pallet clearly and the one behind it poorly, and you cannot reach the back one without moving the front one. A count of a double-deep run is really two counts, one of what you can see and one of what you are trusting is there.
• Drive-in. The lane runs last-in-first-out and holds one SKU at a time, with pallets sitting on rails one behind another. From the aisle face you see the first pallet in the lane. What is behind it depends on the lane's records, or on someone going in to look, and the lane is the part of the racking where a forklift is already working between the uprights.

None of this says the dense systems are wrong. Whether either one suits your stock is decided by the pallets you hold per SKU, the truck you drive and the order stock has to leave in, and that is worked through in drive-in or double-deep racking, chosen by pallets per SKU. The point here is narrower: if you already run a dense system, expect the count to need a different method for those lanes, and plan for it rather than discovering it halfway through the day.

Every location needs an address you can read from where you stand

A count is a comparison between what the system says is in a location and what is physically in it. That comparison is only as good as the address. If two people can read the same bay as two different locations, the count produces two sets of numbers that cannot be reconciled.

The fixes are cheap and best done before the count, not during it. Give every location a fixed-width address with the directions decided once and written down, and mark it on the steel where the counter can read it. High levels need a label that can be read from the floor, because a label fixed at level four is unreadable from the ground. How to build an address, and where labels physically belong, is set out in racking location labels and addressing.

Two label problems show up on count day more than any other:

• Labels that have come off or been knocked. Adhesive labels on powder-coated beams do come off with heat, damp and cleaning, and the label at the foot of an upright is the first casualty of forklift traffic. A counter who has to guess which bay they are standing in will guess wrongly some of the time.
• A bay that was added or changed and never relabelled. It exists on the floor and not on the sheet, or the other way round. Count day is when this surfaces, and by then someone is looking at a discrepancy that is really a labelling error.

The levels nobody is meant to reach by hand

The awkward part of any count is the upper levels. A reserve position is meant to be handled only as a complete unit load, by a truck, and nobody's hands go into it. A count at height is therefore either done by reading a label and a pallet tag from the floor, or by raising a person, and the second option is where the risk is.

The improvised ways of getting a person up to the top levels are the ones that cause injuries: a ladder leaned on the racking, or a person standing on the forks or on a pallet. Racking is designed to carry load down through the frame, not a sideways push part-way up, and tines are designed to carry pallets, not people. If a person genuinely has to be raised, it takes equipment designed for the job. The detail is in picking from the top levels and what height does to a layout, and the same reasoning applies to counting.

The practical answer on count day is to decide the method for the upper levels before anyone is on the floor. Where the stock at height can be identified by a pallet label readable from the aisle, count it from the floor. Where it cannot, treat that as a finding: the layout has a position nobody can verify without risk, and that is worth fixing in the layout rather than working around once a year.

What makes a pallet countable

Some of what slows a count has nothing to do with the racking. It is what is sitting on it.

• Pallet labels facing the aisle. A pallet put away with its label turned to the back wall has to be turned or ignored. A put-away rule that the label faces the aisle costs nothing and saves a reconciliation.
• One SKU to a location, or a visible rule when there are two. A location holding mixed stock on one pallet is the slowest location on the floor to count and the hardest to get right.
• Empty locations recorded as empty. A location the system thinks is full and the floor knows is empty is an easy discrepancy to miss, and it is only found if the counter is told to record the empty ones too.
• Damaged pallets, decking and loose items noted, not ignored. A split or missing deck, or a pallet that has begun to fail, is a finding in its own right. The effect of weak pallets on racking is covered in damaged pallets and racking safety.

A count is also a free walk of the racking

Count day puts people in front of every bay, at a slow walking pace, looking at each level. That is a good chance to spot the things nobody has reported: an upright that is bowed or leaning, a beam that has no safety pin, a baseplate that looks bent, a sagging deck. A counter who spots one of these is not expected to judge it. They need to know who to tell, which is why the racking should have a named owner, and a ten-second instruction before the count starts is enough: if you see damage, note the run, the bay and the level, and report it.

A leaning upright is the one that does not wait. If one turns up on count day, that bay is unloaded, along with the bays either side, before anyone repairs or moves it. The count for that bay can be finished afterwards.

A count is not an inspection and should not be treated as one. We inspect existing racking to SS EN 15635 principles, annually and after an impact, and report each finding in graded form. The counter's eye is a useful extra, not a replacement. The service is set out on our rack inspection page.

Six checks to make before the next count

1. Walk every aisle and check that every location can be read from the floor. List the labels that are missing, faded or wrong.
2. Find every drive-in lane and double-deep run and decide how each will be counted. Write the method down.
3. Decide how the upper levels will be counted, and rule out ladders, forks and pallets as a platform.
4. Tell the put-away team that pallet labels face the aisle and that empty locations are recorded as empty.
5. Give every counter the same instruction for damage: note the run, bay and level and report it, and never load or move anything leaning.
6. After the count, take every location that did not reconcile and ask whether the cause was the stock or the address.

When the layout is the problem

If the same locations are the ones that never reconcile year after year, the cause is often in the layout rather than the people: a run with no readable address, a lane nobody can see into, a top level that cannot be checked without a risky climb. Those are layout decisions, and they are cheapest to change when the layout is being planned or changed anyway. Tell us about the count problem when we survey and it goes into the same conversation as aisle widths and truck routes.

If you want us to look at a warehouse whose runs are hard to count, message us on WhatsApp with the location, roughly how many bays and which system the hard-to-count runs are. Our pallet racking systems page sets out each system and what it trades away.

Related reading: racking location labels and addressing · drive-in or double-deep racking · picking from the top levels