Overselling is one of the most damaging things an online shop can do. A customer pays, waits, and then receives an apology instead of a parcel. The usual response is to look for a better integration between the website and the stock system. Sometimes that helps. Often it only moves the problem.
No integration can make a stock figure more accurate than the process that produces it.
Find out where the truth lives
In many businesses, stock is recorded in more than one place: the accounts system, a warehouse system, a spreadsheet, the website itself and perhaps a marketplace or two. Each has a figure, and they rarely agree. Before changing any software, decide which one is the source of truth for available stock, and make every other system read from it.
Two systems that both think they own the stock figure will both be wrong.
Look at the timing of the process
The most common cause of inaccurate stock is not a bug. It is timing. If goods are booked out at the end of the day, the website spends the whole day selling stock that has already been picked. If deliveries are booked in the next morning, the website hides stock that is sitting in the building.
- Picking and dispatch recorded in batches rather than as they happen
- Goods received but not booked in until later
- Returns sitting in a corner, neither saleable nor written off
- Stock held for trade or showroom orders that the website still counts
- Counts done rarely, with adjustments made without recording why
Then fix the software
Once the process is sound, the integration question becomes much simpler. How often does the website need to check stock? For fast-moving lines, close to real time. For slow-moving ones, less often. Should the site hold back a buffer on low stock items? Usually yes, a small safety margin avoids most overselling at little cost.
- Reserve stock when an order is placed, not when it is dispatched
- Show low stock honestly rather than hiding it
- Log every stock change with a reason, so errors can be traced
- Alert someone when figures between systems drift apart
A good integration can move an accurate number quickly. Making it accurate in the first place is a job for the warehouse, and it is almost always cheaper.
