How to manage quantity on hand for your website for highly sought after limited release products.
Managing Inventory and Preventing Overselling
If you're running a sale for a highly sought-after or rare product with limited quantities, overselling can be a challenge. It's important to note that complete prevention may not be possible, especially if you operate both physical and e-commerce stores. However, you can take steps to mitigate the issue.
Understanding Overselling
To address overselling effectively, it's crucial to understand how it occurs, especially for fast-selling items. This understanding will help you determine the best strategies for your store.
Webhooks and Tower Web Connect (TWC)
TWC becomes aware of sales through your platform, typically via a webhook which is a trigger sent when an event happens on your e-commerce system. When a customer makes a purchase on your site, an order is created, triggering the sending of the webhook. This webhook informs TWC of a sale on your site. TWC processes this information and generates a file for the retailer to update sales and the quantity on hand for stocked items. However, during this process, more sales may occur, rendering the figure sent back from the retailer inaccurate due to recent, unprocessed sales from the e-commerce platform.
Mitigating Oversells
Here are two steps you can take to mitigate overselling:
- Enable 'TWC Track Product Inventory Levels': In your TWC preferences, enable this option. It checks the quantity sent by the retailer against known sales that TWC is aware of but hasn't yet imported. However, if a sale occurs while TWC is updating your e-commerce Quantity on Hand figure, or if there's a delay in the webhook trigger from your e-commerce platform, your QOH figure may still be updated with the incorrect value because TWC isn't aware of the new sales.
- Disable 'Update Product Inventory Levels' During Sales: In your TWC preferences, you can temporarily untick the 'Update Product Inventory Levels' option when running a sale. This action indicates that you want to rely on your e-commerce platform to manage its own Quantity on hand and prevent overselling during the sale. Keep in mind that if you also sell in-store, the e-commerce quantity won't update with in-store sales. Remember to re-tick the option once the sales have finished.
- Consider isolating in store and ecommerce quantity on hand: When using the setting above it may be a good idea to consider splitting your quantity on hand between your retail store and your website. That way you can isolate the both quantities figures and prevent overselling.
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