Count tiles on a pallet from a photo

Counting tile boxes and loose tiles on a pallet

Tile stock turns up in two forms: sealed boxes stacked on a pallet, and loose tiles stood on edge in a showroom rack or left over at the end of a job. Tilers check pallets before the driver leaves, then again part-way through a floor to see whether another order is needed. For boxed stock, photograph each side of the pallet straight-on so the box ends form a clean grid; for loose tiles, shoot the stacked edges with light raking across them so each tile shows as its own line.

Shrink-wrap throws a band of glare across the middle of a pallet, so step to one side until the reflection slides off the boxes. Printed logos and size labels repeat on every carton; if markers land on labels rather than on whole boxes, mark one complete box end as an example and recount. Boxes in the core of a pallet never appear in a photo, so a face count multiplied by the number of rows is an estimate, not a count.

Name each tally row after the pallet or the tile range, then export the sheet as CSV for the job file. Cartons of other goods are handled on the box counter; to count the pallets in a yard rather than what sits on them, try pallet counting. Patio stock follows a similar routine on the paver block page.