Returnable packaging and pallets: the stock people forget

The stock report lists goods but no pallets. Yet the warehouse often holds hundreds of them, plus wire-mesh boxes, reusable crates and containers that belong partly to the company itself and partly to customers, suppliers or carriers. Because they have no goods value in the usual sense, they are not posted, not counted and not reconciled, until somebody asks where 60 pallets have actually gone. This article shows how to keep returnable packaging and load carriers as a stock of their own.

Which stocks are meant

• Pallets, wire-mesh boxes and reusable containers owned by the company.
• Loan pallets and containers from customers, suppliers or carriers.
• Returnable packaging with deposit or settlement, where agreed by contract.
• Third-party pallets that came in with a delivery and were not returned.

The decisive question is always: who owns the item, and who owes whom a return?

Why they get lost

Load carriers travel with the goods to the customer and do not come back. In an exchange, quantity or condition do not match. Pallets stand at another site without anybody having posted it. And because nobody is responsible for them, nobody notices the shrinkage for a long time. The effort of replacing them is noticeable, even if a single pallet costs little.

In addition, load carriers rarely have a fixed place on the rack. They stand at the gate, in the corner, in the yard and with partners. Anyone who wants to count them must first know where they are at all. A walk-round the day before the count, in which all locations of returnable packaging are entered on a site plan, saves the search on count day.

Keeping them apart

Keep returnable packaging outside the goods stock:

• a separate storage location or account in the system, or else a simple table,
• a balance per partner with opening stock, issues, returns and closing stock,
• a document for each handover or return, for example a note on the delivery note,
• a separation by owner and condition (intact, defective),
• separate records by size and type, because only like items can be set off against each other.

Counting and reconciling (illustrative example)

On count day returnable packaging belongs on a list of its own, separated by owner and condition. Afterwards the stock is reconciled with the partners. Suppose that according to the books the company owns 520 pallets of its own. In the warehouse 310 are counted, of which 22 are defective. According to written balance confirmations, 90 are with customer A and 60 with customer B, 150 together. That makes 310 + 150 = 460, leaving a difference of 520 − 460 = 60 pallets.

Now the search for causes begins: returns without a document, exchange at the ramp, delivery to another site. In addition there are 75 third-party pallets belonging to a supplier in the warehouse. They do not belong in your own stock but on the third-party list and in the reconciliation with the supplier. The 22 defective pallets are shown separately so that nobody counts them as usable.

Valuation, settlement and reconciliation

Whether returnable packaging is valued, whether a deposit or a settlement applies and how a loss is to be treated is governed by the contract, accounting and the tax adviser. The count team records quantity, owner and condition and makes no decision on settlement or liability.

Ask customers, suppliers and carriers to confirm their balance in writing, ideally at the cut-off time and with a date. If a partner differs, the cause is sought together: delivery notes, return receipts, driver records. Settle who in the company is responsible for this reconciliation, otherwise it gets left lying. Open balances are carried in the difference list with a status, like any other difference.

In short

Anyone who keeps load carriers as a stock of their own will also find them again. AuditMaster records returnable packaging and third-party goods separately from the goods stock, shows them separately in the difference list and names weak points in handover and return in a warehouse audit.