Stock Level Monitoring Checklist

Pull the top 20% of SKUs by GMV (your A-class) and count physical units against the on-hand quantity in Cin7 / SkuVault / NetSuite. Weekly cadence on A-class catches drift before it becomes an oversell on Amazon or Shopify.

Open Seller Central → Manage FBA Shipments and check any shipment received in the last 7 days. File lost-shipment claims within the 30-day reconcile window — proof of shipment (BOL, packing list, carton photos) is required. Money left on the table here is the most common FBA reimbursement miss.

Trace the variance to a specific cause: receiving error, pick error, shrink, FNSKU mislabel, or 3PL miscount. Adjust on-hand in the OMS with a reason code so trend analysis later can spot patterns by warehouse or SKU.

Spot-check 10 SKUs at the warehouse for correct UPC and FNSKU labels. Commingled inventory mistakes (wrong FNSKU on a unit) cause Amazon to ship the wrong product to your customer and trigger ODR hits.

Confirm Shopify, Amazon, eBay, and Walmart on-hand quantities all match the OMS source of truth. Sync lag of even 30 minutes during a sales spike is enough to oversell — Linnworks / Veeqo / Sellbrite all show last-sync timestamps per channel.

Force a manual push from the OMS to the affected channel and confirm the new quantity lands. If a Shopify variant is showing in stock when actual on-hand is zero, set it to draft or pause the listing until sync is confirmed — better to lose a sale than take an order you can't ship.

Confirm buffer holdback per channel reflects current velocity — typically 2-5 units held back from Amazon FBM / Shopify when FBA is your primary channel, more if you've recently had sync issues. Buffers protect against the race condition between two channels selling the last unit.

Pull the FBA Inventory report and review the Reserved (customer order, FC transfer, FC processing) and Unfulfillable buckets. Stranded or unfulfillable units don't sell — submit a removal order or relabel request to recover them.

Pull DOS from Helium 10, Sellerise, or your OMS — flag any SKU under 30 days of supply factoring in current sell-through. For Q4-sensitive SKUs raise the threshold to 60-90 days to account for CNY shutdowns and ocean transit delays.

Email each active supplier for current lead-time estimates — production lead time has been drifting post-CNY and during port congestion windows. Document any change against the lead time on file in the OMS so reorder points stay accurate.

Use the OMS recommendation engine (or Amazon's restock report as a sanity check) to generate suggested PO quantities. Override any line where forecast doesn't reflect a known event — upcoming Meta launch, influencer drop, marketplace deal lock-in, or wholesale order.

Operations Manager reviews and approves; founder/CEO sign-off required on POs over the dollar threshold defined in your spend policy. Send POs with confirmed quantities, unit cost, target ship date, and Incoterms (typically FOB origin or DDP).

Sort SKUs by inventory turns over the trailing 90 days. Slow movers (under 2 turns/year) tie up cash and FBA storage — flag for promo, bundle, liquidation, or removal. Fast movers (over 8 turns) are at high stockout risk and may need elevated safety stock.

Pull last cycle's demand forecast and compare to actual unit sales by SKU. Forecast bias over 20% in either direction means the forecast model needs adjustment — common driver is a missed seasonality factor or a recent ad-spend change not reflected in the model.

For each slow-moving SKU, decide: discount and clear, bundle with a fast mover, remove from FBA (storage fees compound), or discontinue. Long-term FBA storage fees hit Feb 15 and Aug 15 — clear aged inventory before those dates.

Adjust the next-period forecast based on actuals, planned promotions, ad-spend changes, and known seasonality. Document assumptions so the next variance review can trace bias back to a specific input.

Hero SKUs (top revenue drivers) at risk of stockout before next PO arrival need an intervention plan now: pause ad spend, add to backorder, or air-freight expedite. Stockouts on hero SKUs hit Buy Box on Amazon and erode organic ranking that's expensive to rebuild.

Pause Amazon Sponsored Products, Google Shopping, and Meta catalog ads on any SKU at zero on-hand. Continued spend drives clicks to an out-of-stock listing — wasted ROAS and a poor customer experience that depresses conversion rate going forward.

Customer Service Manager updates Gorgias / Zendesk macros with current ETA and recommended alternatives. Add a back-in-stock waitlist via Klaviyo on Shopify PDPs. Communicating an honest 3-week ETA beats silence — silence drives chargebacks and 1-star reviews.

Pull any backorder over 14 days old and any negative review or NPS comment mentioning stock issues. Patterns here surface forecasting blind spots — three customers complaining about a SKU's availability is signal, not noise.