A website that never sells what the shop already sold
The shop and the website share stock, but not in real time. Here is how a stock sync stops overselling without replacing the till or the store.
The problem
A customer buys online, then gets an email saying the item is gone: the last one sold in the shop that morning, to someone heading for the trail. Staff fix stock levels by hand every evening.
What was really causing it
The till and the website each keep their own count, and they talk once a night, if the export runs. On a busy weekend in season, a day is a long time.
The till and the website each keep their own count, and they talk once a night, if the export runs.
What the research says
- 65% of nearly 370,000 inventory records across 37 stores of one retailer were inaccurate (N. DeHoratius and A. Raman, Management Science 54(4), Inventory Record Inaccuracy: An Empirical Analysis)
- 26.4% of the variation in accuracy lay between product categories, against 2.7% between stores (N. DeHoratius and A. Raman, Management Science 54(4), Inventory Record Inaccuracy: An Empirical Analysis)
If records drift that far in one chain running one system, a shop and a website keeping separate counts drift faster. The fix is not counting harder every evening. It is one count that every sale, delivery and return updates, and a daily check that says where it has drifted.
What we built
A small service that keeps one stock count and updates every channel within minutes of a sale, a delivery or a return, with alerts when numbers disagree.
- Sold A sale at the till or online is recorded where it happens.
- Synced The shared count updates and every channel follows within minutes.
- Checked Counts that drift apart raise an alert instead of a cancelled order.
- Reordered Low stock creates a reorder suggestion for a person to approve.
What stays as it is
Your till system and your online store. Neither is replaced.
Ways to keep the two in step
| Approach | What it does | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Nightly export | Copies counts from the till to the website once a day | Anything sold during the day can be sold twice |
| Stock buffer | Shows less online than the till holds | Hides stock you have; still oversells on busy days |
| Built-in connector | Syncs on a schedule, often every few minutes | Often skips returns, bundles or a second shop; fails silently |
| One shared count | Every sale, delivery and return updates one number, with a daily drift check | Needs both systems to accept changes, which most do |
Where AI fits, and where it does not
None needed. This is reliable plumbing between systems. We say so rather than add AI for show.
What it is worth
What comes next
Reorder suggestions from sales history and the seasons, and a view of slow and fast sellers by category.
Questions people ask
- Our till and our store platform both say they sync. Why does it still go wrong?
Many syncs run on a schedule, skip returns or bundles, or stop silently when one side changes. What fixes it is a sync that runs on every change, and a daily check that flags drift.
- Do we need to replace the till?
No. Both systems stay; a small service sits between them.
- What about the stock count itself?
Regular cycle counts on fast sellers keep the shared number honest. The research above found that auditing practices reduce inaccuracy.
- Inventory Record Inaccuracy: An Empirical Analysis, N. DeHoratius and A. Raman, Management Science 54(4) (2008)
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