What are some issues that can arise during BFCM sales?

During sales periods there is an increased volume in orders. This can cause issues in correctly managing stock levels on your store and especially across multiple stores. If the stock service is running more frequently and/or before the order service runs, it is possible that the stock service gets data from the WMS/ERP and updates the ecommerce platform before the recently placed orders have been synced to the WMS/ERP. This then creates a situation where there is stock being shown as available to customers when in reality it should be assigned to orders that have not yet been synced. This then presents the opportunity for oversells to occur, below are some ways in which this can be avoided.

How to avoid stock issues?

Stockr

If you are currently using Stockr then you will be familiar with how quickly Stockr is able to update stock levels (through incremental stock updates) and sync orders to your WMS, this can then prevent oversells by being able to ensure that data is synced not only between the store and your WMS but also between different stores.

Once Stockr is set up the only other stock service that is required is a sweeper service, this sweeper service will sync the stock levels for all products across your stores to ensure that they are all aligned with your WMS.

Keep in mind that the sweeper has to be run at a time when all stores have low sales volumes. Sweeper services need to be run to make sure that all orders have been successfully processed into the WMS / ERP.

Disabling services

The second way which can be used:

Disable all stock services for the duration of the sale - only when there's a single store being serviced by the WMS. This can be done using the dashboard. Here’s the guide.

Disable services and perform a stock split when there are multiple stores being serviced by the WMS. We can do this for you, but we’ll need information of your sale.

Stock buffers/Stock Splits

Setting up stock buffers/stock splits can improve sales safety for all stores.
A stock buffer is where a certain amount of stock is held back to account for any timing issues in the syncing of stock. For example, if the WMS is showing 10 in stock, a buffer of 2 may be set up so that only 8 would be shown as available in the ecommerce platform.

In addition to this a stock split is where the stock quantity is split from one warehouse to multiple stores based on the expected performance of each store. For example, if the WMS had 100 in stock and there is a US and UK store, without a stock split both stores would show 100 units in stock. This could result in oversells if the stock cannot be updated quickly enough between stores.

To prevent this from happening stock splits can be set up to allocate stock to the different stores. If it was predicted that the US store was to perform better than the UK store in a given period, of the 100 in stock, 60 could be allocated to the US store and 40 would be allocated to the UK store. This would then eliminate the need to ensure the stock levels are exactly synchronised between the different store