The inventory is the documented record of all tangible assets owned by a natural person, a company, a community, etc., at a given time. This is carried out in order to verify the current existence of said assets and its performance must be thorough and exact so that the results obtained are reliable and do not show any error.
Previously, inventories were carried out by physical means and were recorded manually on sheets of paper, thanks to technological advances that overwhelm and are always one step ahead of human needs, these are currently carried out by means of super intelligent computers that complete the activity with the minimum margin of error and in the shortest possible time. Although the ways of carrying out an inventory have changed, their characteristics will always be the same and must be present at all times, in order to achieve a perfect inventory. The characteristics of a perfect inventory are the following:
- It is detailed, since it specifies each and every one of the characteristics of all the assets that make up the assets of the person, company or community.
- It is ordered because it groups all the elements that make up the patrimoni or in their corresponding accounts and these in turn in their patrimonial masses.
- It is valued, since each of the elements is given a value expressed in monetary units.
Likewise, the realization of an inventory depends on the company or the person who is in charge of the activity, as well as the moment in which it is carried out, so these factors generate different types of inventory that are the following:
- Final inventories, carried out whenever the fiscal period ends, which is usually December 31 of each year.
- Periodic inventories, carried out every certain time (weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) depending on the analyst in charge.
- Initial inventories, carried out in a company at the beginning of the fiscal period, which is usually January 1 of each year.
- Inventories for legal and political liquidation in your process.
- Inventories of products in their manufacturing process.
- Inventories of raw materials, made of all the materials necessary for the manufacture of the products offered by the company.
- Inventories of factory supplies.
- Inventories of finished products.
- Inventories of materials and supplies.
- Specific inventories.
- Forest inventories.
- Management inventories.
- Physical inventory
