Managing your online business’s inventory is a whole lot more challenging than it used to be. Gone are the days of owning a brick-and-mortar store with a physical stockroom, where you could organize everything on different shelves and see at a glance when you needed to re-order a certain product.
Now, we’re not limited to selling in an actual store location, which is a good thing in many ways. But it means that managing stock can be a whole lot harder, especially if you drop-ship your products and have no access to a physical inventory.
Thankfully, businesses have created tools that eCommerce stores can use to better manage their inventory, especially when selling across different websites. Here, we’re sharing everything you should know about how to avoid losing sales to stock errors with one of the simplest inventory management solutions.
Stock Errors Happen More Than You Think—Here’s Why
Stock errors usually come down to one problem: your inventory isn’t talking to your sales channels.
If you’re selling goods on more than one platform, like Amazon, Shopify, or eBay, then every time someone places an order, your stock count will change. But if your platforms don’t collaborate with each other in real time, it’s pretty much only a matter of time before someone buys something you no longer have.
And you don’t want that to happen, since you’ll have to cancel the order and risk a bad review—or worse, lose that customer for good.
Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Manual Updates
If you’re still using the dreaded spreadsheet method to keep track of your stock, this is something that needs to change ASAP.
Fair enough, manually updating your stock levels might be okay if you only sell a few products and rarely sell across multiple channels. But once your business grows, you’ll be far more likely to sell out of something without knowing or hold back stock just to be safe.
Both of these have the potential to hurt your bottom line. You can’t grow while you’re second-guessing what’s in stock or asking your team to update half a dozen systems every time something sells—it’s just not practical.
The Solution: Use an Inventory Sync Tool Instead
The simplest way to avoid the hassle and mistakes that come from self-managing your stock is to use an inventory management tool that syncs your stock across every platform you sell on.
Tools like https://www.syncio.co/ connect all your store platforms, updating your inventory automatically every time you sell something. They’ll also make updates whenever you accept a return or receive new stock, eliminating all the manual work on your end.
Having one central system that controls your stock levels everywhere just makes sense, eliminating the potential to input duplicate data or accidentally oversell a product.
Takeaway
Using a tool that updates your stock in real time means you can free up your time to focus on the things that matter, like running marketing campaigns, launching new products, or just putting your feet up.
So, if you’re still living in the past and manually updating your stock, you know what to do.