Journal · 11 May 2026
How fiscal year-end cut-off errors show up in inventory counts
Goods in transit and late supplier invoices often distort cost of sales. Here is what we look for during a typical Ishikawa manufacturing count.
When a manufacturing client closes the books in March, the physical count is rarely the hard part. The hard part is deciding which shipments still belong in stock and which should already sit in cost of sales.
We start with the last goods-received notes before midnight on the balance sheet date, then match them to supplier invoices that arrive in April. A crate that left the Osaka warehouse on 30 March but reached Izumi on 2 April often sits in limbo unless the receiving dock stamped both dates.
For coastal plants that ship seafood or seasonal goods, we also walk the cold rooms with the warehouse lead. Condensation and temporary staging areas hide pallets that never made it onto the count sheets. Those omissions inflate margins until the next period absorbs the correction.
If your finance team prepares a cut-off memo before we arrive—listing open POs, in-transit lots, and late invoices—fieldwork moves faster and the audit adjustments stay smaller. Bring the stamped dock logs; verbal estimates rarely survive sampling.