The 'Inventory Lag': How Manual Entry Causes Overselling

Imagine this scenario:

• 10:00 AM: You have 10 units of Item A in stock.
• 10:05 AM: Customer X emails a PO for 10 units.
• 10:10 AM: Customer Y buys 5 units on your B2C website.
• 10:30 AM: Your sales rep finally opens Customer X’s email and tries to enter the order.
• CRISIS: You are -5 units. You oversold.

This is called Inventory Lag. It is the dangerous time gap between an order arriving and an order being recognized by your inventory system.

The Cost of Lag

In a high-volume business, a lag of even 30 minutes can be fatal.

• B2C Customers get angry because their order is cancelled.
• B2B Customers get angry because their PO was “first,” but the system gave the stock to someone else.

Real-Time Ingestion

The only way to close this gap is to reduce the entry time to near zero.

Automated extraction tools ingest orders as they arrive.

• 10:05 AM: PO arrives.
• 10:06 AM: AI extracts data.
• 10:06 AM: Draft Order created in Shopify. Inventory is Reserved.
• 10:10 AM: Customer Y tries to buy, but sees “Out of Stock.”

By reserving inventory immediately upon receipt of the email, you protect your B2B relationships. You prioritize the high-value POs over the casual web traffic. You stop explaining “ghost inventory” to angry clients.