The medium frame that sold on Saturday
On Saturday afternoon a customer buys the last medium frame of a popular gravel bike in store. On Sunday evening someone orders the same bike in medium on your website. On Monday morning you have to email them, apologise and offer a large, a different colour or a refund. They take the refund and buy elsewhere.
It is not only sales. A bike moved to your other shop, one out on demo, and one waiting for a customer who paid a deposit are all counted as available online. Accessories are worse, with hundreds of sizes of tubes, tyres and chains.
Bikes are not a simple stock item
A single bike model might come in five frame sizes and three colours, and each combination is its own stock line. Many shops also list bikes they do not hold but can order from a distributor. The website and the EPOS were often set up separately, with different product names, so matching them is a manual job that is always slightly behind.
- Product names and codes differ between the till and the web shop.
- Stock updates run once a day, or when someone remembers to upload a file.
- Bikes on demo, reserved or at another branch still show as available.
- Distributor availability for bikes you do not hold is copied by hand.
- Accessories with many variants are not synced at all.
Refunds, apologies and lost trust
Each oversell means a refund, an apologetic email and a customer who is less likely to try again. Online payment fees on refunded orders may not come back. Staff spend Monday mornings fixing weekend orders instead of serving customers.
Undersold stock costs too. If the website does not show bikes you do have, or lists them as sold out, those sales never happen. And staff lose trust in the web figures, so they stop relying on them for anything.
Stock synced at the size and colour level
We build a sync between your EPOS and your web shop, whether that is Shopify, WooCommerce or another platform with an API.
- We map every product and variant between the two systems using barcodes and supplier codes, and give you a screen to fix the ones that do not match.
- Stock changes in the EPOS are pushed to the website as they happen, or at short intervals if the EPOS does not support live updates.
- Web orders reduce stock in the EPOS, so the till knows a bike is spoken for.
- Bikes on demo, reserved against a deposit or held for a workshop build are marked unavailable online without removing them from stock.
- For bikes you order in, distributor availability feeds, where the distributor provides one, set whether a size shows as 'available to order' and with what delivery wording.
- Any mismatch the sync cannot resolve goes to a short daily list for a person.
| Situation | Without sync | With sync |
|---|---|---|
| Last medium sold in store | Still shown online | Removed from sale online |
| Bike out on demo | Shown as in stock | Hidden, still in stock count |
| Size held at distributor | Copied by hand | Shown as available to order |
| Code mismatch | Silent error | On the daily exceptions list |
A website you can trust on a Monday
Online orders are for stock you can supply. The Monday apology emails mostly disappear. Staff can use the website figures as a quick stock check. And because distributor availability is shown clearly, customers can order a bike you do not hold, knowing it has to be ordered in.
Is your website selling bikes you do not have?
- You refund online orders for sizes that sold in store.
- Product names differ between the till and the web shop.
- Stock updates depend on someone uploading a file.
- Demo and reserved bikes show as available online.
- Distributor stock is copied onto the website by hand.