One of the biggest nightmares in e-commerce is making a sale only to realize that the product is out of stock. There are myriad reasons it could happen\u2014outdated spreadsheets, stock wasn\u2019t updated when it was sold from a different marketplace or store, or maybe just human error and no one realized the stock was that low. Regardless of how it happens, it\u2019s crucial in e-commerce to avoid overselling inventory. Here, we\u2019ll explain a few of the best ways to do it!<\/p>\n
When you first started out, spreadsheets may have seemed like an easy way to manage a handful of SKUs. Maybe you have a shared doc that you and other employees update. This approach, however, leaves plenty of room for human error. People may forget to update. Someone might overwrite someone else\u2019s edits. The sheet may get deleted. The list goes on.<\/p>\n
This becomes even more convoluted when you\u2019re dealing with inventory being sold on different sales channels. When you can have all of your inventory levels sync up in a single platform, you can manage everything with ease. Timely and accurate inventory levels mean you never have to end up having the awkward conversation with a customer that they\u2019ll have to wait while you reorder the product they ordered. Spreadsheets simply don\u2019t scale. What does scale is a platform that incorporates robust automation and talks to your sales channels.<\/p>\n
The easiest way to mitigate an issue is to be aware of it. Implementing low-stock alerts will help you avoid overselling inventory by letting you set a specific threshold in your stock that initiates an alert. This can and should be based on your reordering turnaround times. We\u2019ll talk about that more in a minute. A good inventory management solution should allow you to set up low-stock alerts that make sense for your business processes.<\/p>\n