Definition
Inventory period
The time between a defined opening inventory cutoff and closing inventory cutoff, the window every purchase, sale, transfer, and adjustment must share for a fair comparison.
Worked example
You close a count Sunday 11:00 p.m. and open the next Monday 10:00 a.m. after receiving. The inventory period for variance should exclude Monday morning sales until the new opening count is set, or those sales will look like unexplained depletion against Sunday's closing stock.
When operators use this
Name the period before you export sales. A stocktake at 11 p.m. Sunday is not the same window as a POS export through Monday brunch. bar stocktaking is the ritual that creates the cutoffs. actual usage and projected usage are only comparable when they share this window.
Common mistakes
Pulling 'this week' from the POS while the count closed last Tuesday is the classic fake variance. Receiving a case after the walk starts, then leaving it out of the period, does the same. Write the cutoff on the session, not in a Slack thread.
How ExactPour handles it
ExactPour ties variance and pour-cost analysis to count sessions and POS sales in the same window. Managers pick comparable periods (week-over-week, period-over-period) so cutoffs stay explicit instead of buried in a spreadsheet tab name.
Qualification
Sales, purchases, transfers, and adjustments must use compatible cutoffs for a meaningful comparison. Mismatched periods create fake variance.