7 Ecommerce Inventory Management Best Practices You Should Follow

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7 Ecommerce Inventory Management 

Best Practices You Should Follow 

For an ecommerce business to succeed amidst the increasing competition, there 

are a few central things which should be managed proficiently. Among these, 

proper Inventory management is vital to the smooth running of a business. 

Choosing the products you want to sell, and setting up a proper business model 

to source products and a way to make them available to customers is an 

important part of any business. 

But how do you manage your inventory? What are the aspects you should take 

care of? Not every business owner is an efficient supply chain expert and hence, 

need guidance on the same. The first step in the right direction in this regard 

would be to get a robust inventory management software for your online store 

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that helps you manage purchases, stocks, documentation, stock keeping, etc 

and automated routine tasks like generation of purchase orders and invoices. 

But even to get the best out of any software you should know how inventory 

management is done. Here’s a list of 7 ecommerce inventory management best 

practices that will get you started. 

1. Priority Stock Up 

To ensure that your best selling items are never going out of stock, you should 

regularly check that they are enough in stock to ship to the next customer. 

Going ‘out of stock’ for the popular products on your site can be destructive for 

your business. Other products which might be seasonal or shows one or two 

sales now and then can take this for once, but high priority merchandise should 

be reordered immediately after the product is ordered by a customer (not 

waiting for the actual shipment process. 

2. Drop Shipping 

Drop shipping almost means that you never run out of stock without even 

having a physical inventory. What merchants do is take up the order and engage 

drop shippers to pick up the product from the supplier, pack it, and send it to 

the customer. The customer needs not to know if any third party had been 

engaged in the transaction. This also doesn’t come to be hassle- free. You need 

to continuously sync in with the shipper for updates regarding inventory, order, 

and delivery. You can then convey the order status to the customer. But it’s 

worth the effort. It also allows you to offer a huge array of products to your 

customers and enhances customer satisfaction. 

3. Immediate Inventory Updates 

You should keep a close check on your inventory. As soon as a product is sold, 

you should get the space refilled immediately. Don’t postpone it to a certain 

time after sales, your next order could be in another half an hour, so keep 

yourself geared up for that by having immediate updates and take quick actions 

by sourcing that product at the earliest. If you fail to do so, it’s not good for your 

businesses revenue sheets. If your site shows a certain product is in stock and 



the customer is later informed about the unavailability, you might lose the 

customer for life. 

4. Cross-Platform Inventory Management 

If you are selling across platforms, you need to be more vigilant with your 

inventory. For separate channels, manage different warehouses and inventory 

records or you might end up messing it. If a product is out of stock and any of 

the channels fail to update it, a customer might order the product and you are 

left with no option but to inform them later that it’s out of stock. Therefore, you 

must make it a point to handle all channels efficiently. You can also take help 

from ecommerce inventory management software which helps you integrate 

the channels and manage the inventory. 

5. Managing Variety of Products 

Stocking up your inventory timely gets more difficult when you are dealing in 

variant products. It can be easy to stock up items like books or kitchen 

accessories, but the same goes complicated when you are dealing in apparels 

and footwear. That’s because you don’t just need to refill a particular design or 

color for apparels or similar items, but different sizes as well. A proper and full 

inventory means having all the sizes, in all designs and colors ready at any 

moment. So, if you are dealing in businesses like these, it would be difficult to 

keep a check through the e-commerce platform and will need a proper 

inventory management solution to ensure that your stock is updated. 

6. Kits and Combos 

When you are offering products as individual items and as a part of combination 

sets as well, you need to keep a check on these products. If any of these 

products go out of stock individually and you don’t take heed, you might not be 

able to ship the kit/combo on time and that’s definitely not good for your 

business. You can also engage in partnership with a third party to manage 

responsibility for collecting the combination products from different sellers, 

pack it, and ship it. Your inventory remains intact and your customer satisfied. 



7. Calculate Re-Stocking Time 

Managing an ecommerce store means sourcing products or raw materials from 

different sellers and further putting them up on sale. When you are sourcing 

products from different sellers, you should know in advance of the time they will 

take to send out certain products. Note that they are actually re stocking the 

items within that time period. Synchronization with your sellers is as much 

important. When you know how much time is required for you to get a product, 

you can plan to restock your inventory accordingly. If you are ordering raw 

materials, you need to speed up a bit as it takes time to get the final product 

that is to be shipped to the customer. So, calculate the average time it takes to 

restock a product and plan accordingly. 

Conclusion 

Though it is true that it’s not easy to run a hassle-free business, but it is certainly 

not impossible. If you align your strategies properly with the day to day activities 

of your business, the sail will be much smoother. If you once get a formula 

which works fine for the kind of products you deal in, your inventory would get 

much easier to manage. But as no particular thing fits for all, you need to come 

to that stage where you have discovered it yourself. Once you know how buying 

and selling goes swiftly for your e-commerce, you can follow it to grow your 

business further and generate more sales and revenue. 

Resources: 

https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/blog/ecommerce-inventory-man 

agement-best-practices/ 

Reference : 

● https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/magento-mobile-inventory.htm 

● https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/magento-mob-admin.htm 

● https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/magento-mobile-pos.htm

7 Ecommerce Inventory Management Best Practices You Should Follow

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