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Picture this: You're 90 feet in the air, clinging to the side of a grain bin, covered head-to-toe in corn dust thick enough to taste. Your boots are soaked in fertilizer. Your pants just ripped on a ladder cage. And somewhere in the shadows, a bat is sleeping.
Welcome to inventory audit season.
Matt Gardiner isn't a farmer. He's a third-generation accountant based in Iowa. But several times a year, he trades his desk for a dust mask and climbs into grain bins to verify millions of bushels of corn for his agricultural clients.
*"There's so much dust in the process of getting grain into a bin that it would have to have a little windshield wiper on the sensors to constantly clear it,"* Gardiner jokes. *"I think that'd be great."*
Spoiler: That technology doesn't exist yet.
The Last Analog Task in a Digital Profession
In an era where AI can draft emails, analyze financial statements, and even predict market trends, you might assume that counting inventory—a seemingly straightforward task—would be fully automated by now.
Think again.
While accounting firms and their clients are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence, drones, and robotics for data analysis and reporting, **physically verifying inventory remains stubbornly, messily human**.
That means young auditors still embark on what might be the profession's quirkiest rite of passage: traveling to remote locations to count… well, almost anything.
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- Chickens and pigs 🐷
- Piles of quarry rocks 🪨
- Corn in towering grain bins 🌽
- Streetlights and telephone poles 💡
- Cartons of frozen fish in subzero freezers 🐟
*"I just counted thousands and thousands of nuts and bolts. What did you do today?"* One Gen Z auditor posted on TikTok.
Another Reddit user recalled being sent to count rocks in below-freezing weather—including a pile in a snake-infested quarry. (Yes, really.)
Deborah Oyaleke described verifying frozen fish inventory in a large freezer room as *"the kind of cold that makes you rethink all your life choices."*
Why Can't AI Just Do This?
Great question. And the short answer is: **regulation, cost, and complexity**.
U.S. auditing standards still require that a *person* physically verify inventory. The rules contain scant mentions of AI—and until recently, still referenced fax machines. (Yes, fax machines.)
Even when technology is allowed, it's not always practical:
🔹 **Drones struggle** with items that are covered, hidden, or indoors—like cattle in mountainous terrain or inventory inside warehouses.
🔹 **Sensors get blinded** by dust, moisture, or extreme temperatures.
🔹 **Advanced tools are expensive**, putting them out of reach for smaller firms or rural clients.
🔹 **Tech fails at the worst moments**: One audit team's barcode scanners malfunctioned in a subzero facility, forcing an all-night manual count—and a very delayed Thanksgiving dinner.
*"These are challenging things, even with drone technology,"* admits Will Bible, digital products leader at Deloitte & Touche.
The Human Factor (and the Smell Factor)
Beyond the tech limitations, there's the human element—both the value and the… aroma.
Shawn Richardson, an audit partner at Oklahoma-based HoganTaylor, still remembers the lingering scent of pig farms after inventory counts.
*"It doesn't matter how many times you wash your hair,"* he says. *"When you get on a plane, you know you're that guy that everybody is dreading sitting next to."*
He once had a herd of pigs charge at him during a count, only to learn the farmers were quietly dropping barriers behind him to move the animals. The farmhands laughed. Richardson? Less amused.
And it's not just the environment that's challenging. There's also the awkward dynamic of showing up as a young auditor to verify the work of seasoned professionals.
*"Imagine being a middle-aged person who knows your job inside out,"* one Reddit user wrote, *" and once a year, some kid barely out of school who has no idea what you even do… gets sent in to check that you counted things right. Absolutely the worst part of any audit."*
Why Firms Still Send Humans (For Now)
Despite the discomfort, there are reasons these field trips persist:
✅ **Learning opportunity**: Junior auditors gain firsthand insight into clients' operations, supply chains, and risks.
✅ **Professional judgment**: Humans can spot anomalies, ask contextual questions, and assess conditions that algorithms might miss.
✅ **Relationship building**: Face-to-face interaction still matters in client services.
*"Audited companies are stepping up their use of AI and robotics in inventory data and storage,"* notes Christian Peo, KPMG's U.S. assurance leader. *"Which means auditors can target higher-risk areas."*
In other words: Tech isn't replacing the auditor—it's helping them focus on what matters most.
The Future: Hybrid Counts and Smarter Tools
Change is coming—just not overnight.
Firms are experimenting with:
- **Expert-operated drones** for aerial counts of large outdoor inventories (replacing costly helicopter surveys)
- **AI-powered analytics** to flag discrepancies before fieldwork begins
- **IoT sensors** in storage facilities to provide real-time inventory data (though, as Gardiner notes, they still need that mythical "windshield wiper" for dust)
The goal isn't to eliminate human auditors from the field—but to make their time there safer, smarter, and less… pungent.
*"AI can count something faster than a human can, so you can see it coming,"* says Peo.
But until regulations catch up and technology conquers the dust, the cold, and the snakes, someone still has to climb the bin.
A Survival Guide for Aspiring Inventory Auditors
If you're heading out on your first count, take this advice from the pros:
🧤 **Dress for the job you have, not the one you want**: Layers for freezers, boots for farms, and—yes—be prepared to wear client-provided clothing to prevent contamination.
🔦 **Bring backups**: Tech fails. Bring clipboards, flashlights, and patience.
🤝 **Ask questions**: Clients know their inventory better than anyone. Lean on their expertise.
😷 **Embrace the absurd**: You might count nuts, bolts, bats, or nuts of bats. Laugh. Document. Learn.
And as Richardson puts it with hard-earned wisdom:
> *"Until you've worn another person's underwear going to do a count, you don't know what it's really like."*
The Bottom Line
Accounting is going digital—fast. But some truths remain analog: dirt gets on your boots, cold steals your breath, and sometimes, you just have to climb the ladder and count the corn.
For now, that messy, bizarre, unforgettable fieldwork isn't a bug in the system. It's a feature—a reminder that behind every balance sheet, there's a real-world operation worth understanding… even if it means smelling like a pig farm on the flight home.