How should I keep my website stock accurate?

Keeping your website stock up to date is important to prevent you from selling out of stock products to customers. To avoid disappointed customers, there are ways to ensure your website stock levels are kept up to date. 

Firstly, when you first sign a new supplier, one of your initial questions should be - "How will you update us on your stock levels?"

They will often already have a process in place to keep their current retailers updated on their stock conditions. If so, they will advise this process early on and you will slot straight into their method of stock updating straight away.

These processes set up by suppliers may include weekly stock update emails, spreadsheets or occasional emails when they are low on stock of a certain product.

If they do not already have a stock updating process, you could suggest one to your supplier. For example you could ask them to provide you with up to date stock sheets regularly or email you with an overview every week or fortnight.

Initially, you may need to update your website stock yourself after receiving updates from your suppliers. Once you have your VA in place, this is a great job for them to manage the stock levels of your website.

For more sophisticated processes, you can use apps from the Shopify App store. For example, an app called Stock Sync has the ability to automatically update your stock to be in line with your supplier's stock. You will just need to be able to link your supplier's live stock sheet with your app to tell the app and then the app will ensure your website stock is exactly the same as your supplier's stock sheet.