Supporting Year-End Audits and Inventory Reviews With Site Visibility

Year-end is when yard records get their closest look. Counts are compared against inventory systems, equipment lists are checked against what is physically on site, and operations and finance teams work through every difference that turns up. Most of those differences have ordinary explanations, such as an item that moved between areas without a paper trail or a pickup logged on the wrong day, but tracing each one back can take considerable time when nothing recorded what happened between counts.

Samsara Site Visibility does not count inventory, and it does not replace physical counts or inventory records. What it provides is a dated visual record of what happened in the yard, which teams can check when the numbers do not agree. That record helps them reconcile counts, confirm movements, and close the year with fewer open questions.

Where Year-End Questions Come From

Open items at year-end tend to follow a few familiar patterns, and each one comes down to a question about what was where and when it changed. The questions that come up most often include:

• A physical count in a storage area that does not match the inventory record, with no clear point at which the difference began.

• Equipment or materials that moved between yard areas or between sites without a matching entry in the records.

• Items that left the yard with an unclear date, time, or gate.

• Arrival and departure times for vehicles and trailers that are missing or recorded differently by different teams.

• Condition questions at handoff, such as whether an item was damaged before or after it changed hands.

A dated record of the yard gives the team something concrete to check for each of these, which keeps the review from depending on memory and partial paperwork.

Consider a common situation. A count in an outdoor storage area finds ten units where the inventory record lists twelve. The area was last counted six weeks ago, the site keeps footage long enough to cover that span, and the paperwork shows no transfers. With footage from the cameras covering that area, the team can narrow the window, find the dates when units left, see which gate they passed through, and match each movement to a transfer or pickup that was not entered in the records.

What a Clear Record of Yard Activity Includes

Site Visibility records footage from the cameras covering a site and keeps it in a form that can be searched later, so the record exists before anyone has a question. For year-end reviews, the parts of the platform that matter most are:

• Stored footage: Footage is recorded and kept for at least 30 days. The retention period can be customized, and cloud backup can extend how long footage is kept.

• Search: Footage can be searched by date and time and by motion and people, which lets a reviewer move to the relevant stretch of activity without watching hours of recording.

• Saved clips: Clips worth keeping can be saved to a cloud library, where they are stored indefinitely.

• Sharing: Footage can be exported to a desktop or shared through a link sent by email or text, so operations, finance, and audit contacts can look at the same record.

• Access control: Roles and permissions limit who can view footage.

• Recording alerts: The platform can alert the team when a camera or gateway goes offline, so gaps in the record are caught while there is still time to address them.

Together, these features give a yard a record that can be searched, saved, and shared, and that is monitored for gaps while the year is still running.

Organizations that also use Samsara vehicle or trailer tracking have a second source of information. Location data records when assets entered and left a geofenced yard, and camera footage adds visual detail to those entries, such as which gate was used and what was being moved.

Working Through a Discrepancy With the Record

Reviewing a discrepancy follows a consistent order, whether it involves one item or many. The steps are:

• Define the question: the item, the area, and the date range between the last reliable count and the current one.

• Narrow the window using other records, such as paperwork, transfer logs, or tracking data.

• Pull the footage for the camera covering that area, and search by motion and people to reach the relevant activity.

• Confirm what moved, when it moved, and which gate or area it passed through.

• Save the clips that answer the question, and share them with the people reconciling the records.

• Update the inventory record and note the finding so the item can be closed.

Following the same steps for every item keeps the review consistent, and the saved clips remain available if a question about an item comes up again later.

Preparing the Record Before Year-End

Footage can only support a review if it still exists and covers the right places. A few checks completed before year-end put the record in order before it is needed. They include:

• Retention: Compare the retention period with the span between counts. Footage older than the retention period is automatically scheduled for deletion. Shortening the retention setting also deletes older footage, so changes to that setting should wait until the review is finished.

• Saved clips at count dates: Save short clips of the storage areas and gates on the days counts are taken, since saved clips stay in the cloud library after the retention period passes.

• Camera coverage: Confirm that gates, storage areas, and staging zones are covered, and that camera names match the names used on yard maps and inventory sheets so reviewers can find the right view quickly.

• Recording health: Check for cameras that are offline or not recording, and review recent alerts for gaps.

• Access: Confirm that the people who will review footage have the right roles.

Completing these checks early leaves time to correct a gap, such as adjusting a setting or bringing a camera back online, before the review begins.

How SCVS Supports a Dependable Yard Record

SCVS is Samsara’s recommended partner for Pelco camera deployments within the Samsara ecosystem, and a record that holds up during a year-end review depends on decisions made when the deployment is designed and kept current afterward. Our work includes:

• Site assessment: Walking the yard to identify the gates, storage areas, and staging zones where a record matters most.

• Camera placement: Positioning cameras to cover those locations with clear views of where assets sit and how they move.

• Configuration: Setting up alerts and retention to match how long the organization needs to keep its records.

• Training: Showing teams how to search footage, save clips, and share them.

• Ongoing support and deployment reviews: Revisiting placement, alerts, and retention as the yard layout and the organization’s needs change.

Planning these decisions around each yard’s layout and routines means the footage covers the places where year-end questions are most likely to start.

What This Means for Closing the Year

A year-end review is a process of tracing differences back to what happened. A dated record of yard activity gives teams a way to check each difference against footage, confirm what moved and when, and document the answer. Site Visibility works alongside physical counts and inventory systems, and together they can leave fewer items open when the books close.

Preparing the record before year-end, with retention matched to the audit timeline, key clips saved, and coverage confirmed, puts the footage in place before the first question comes up.

If you would like to talk through how Site Visibility could support your yard’s year-end reviews, we offer a free discovery call to walk through your site and what a useful record would include. Get in touch with our team to get started.