Size each online shop's stock buffer

Step 2 of running an online channel: oversold orders on a sale day, or a shop that shows almost nothing, both start here. You choose how much of one pool of stock each marketplace shop may show, which orders lower each shop’s figure, and how big the buffer must be. It follows Step 1, where each listing was made true to what ships, and it feeds Steps 3 to 6 on Ship, cancel, return and dispute.

1. Choose how to share the stock and size the buffer, for GadgetSphere Online’s four marketplace shops.
2. Check it with the held-back check, on your own data, every week and before each campaign (Lazada and Shopee shops, not a bundle item). Orders Shopee cancelled go on being counted, which is why the check is weekly (Step 4).

GadgetSphere Online’s shops sell about 30 flagship smartphones on a normal day and ten times that on a platform sale day, all from the same fulfilment-centre stock; the arithmetic below works on those figures.

Step 2: Choose how much stock each shop may show, and size the buffer from the arithmetic

There are four ways to share one pool of stock among several shops:

1. Show everything everywhere.
2. Hold a buffer back.
3. Show each shop only a share.
4. Dedicate stock to a shop.

Each one buys protection from a different failure:

• Everything everywhere protects against lost sales from a shop that shows too little, and against nothing else. Every oversell risk is open.
• A buffer protects against the oversell that happens between an order arriving and the stock figure catching up.
• A share protects every shop from one shop’s surge: a flash sale on one platform cannot empty the pool the others sell from.
• Dedicated stock protects a promise: units committed to a campaign, a corporate order or the branches.

BigLedger carries out two of them on each marketplace branch’s Stock Configuration:

• A quantity buffer subtracts a fixed number of units.
• A percentage publishes that share of what is left. 100 publishes everything, and 10 publishes a tenth.

Which orders are deducted is a third setting, and it decides whether your shops share one count. On the same tab, the Sales Order sub-tab has an SO Config Type. Only a stock configuration of type AUTO reads it; a MANUAL one with a Stock Balance keyed publishes that figure, with no buffer and no deduction.

ACTIVE with no branch ticked is the right setting when every shop sells from one pool: an order on any shop takes a unit that all of them were showing. Choose SELECTIVE_ACTIVE when a shop has stock of its own, and tick the branches that sell from it. An item whose listing record overrides the branch’s configuration uses its own settings instead. The MKP_SELLER_STOCK_BALANCE type is not covered here.

• Who: the channel manager, when the shop opens, at the same time as the buffer.
• How you know it is right: run the held-back check below for an item that has a Shopee order at READY_TO_SHIP and no Lazada order, on a Lazada shop whose Balance is above zero. Under ACTIVE with no branch ticked, the Lazada shop’s held-back figure is above zero. Under SELECTIVE_ACTIVE with only the Lazada branch ticked, it is zero.

The held-back check: see what open orders are taking, on your own data. How much a counted order takes depends on the marketplace, the order’s status, how many lines the order has and how your branch is set up. Do not try to predict it. Read it off the screen instead. The check is for a Lazada or Shopee shop with a quantity buffer (0 will do), and for an item listed on its own (not as a variant of a listing) that you do not sell on TikTok Shop or Shopify. It does not work for a bundle item: for a bundle, the calculation starts from the stock of one of its components, not from the bundle’s own balance.

1. Open the item in Doc Item Maintenance and go to its Stock Availability tab. There is one row per shop. The row’s Balance is the figure BigLedger last worked out for that shop. Press Calculate Stock first. It works the figure out again for every row, and sends it to the Lazada and Shopee shops. Without it, the Balance can be hours old while the stock balance you read next is today’s, and the check compares the two. The screen shows no message when it has finished and does not redraw the grid. Wait a moment, open another tab of the item, then come back to Stock Availability: the grid is loaded again each time you open the tab.
2. Straight away, from the Stock Balance applet, take the item’s balance at the locations ticked on the shop’s Stock Balance sub-tab.
3. Held back = that stock balance − the buffer − the shop’s Balance. This is what the open channel orders are taking from the shop’s figure.
4. Hand the comparison over. The channel manager counts the item’s units in the seller centres' unshipped orders, on the shops whose orders this shop’s SO Config Type counts. If the held-back figure differs from that count by more than the buffer, ask support to look at the item before anyone lowers the buffer.

A Balance of 0 means the orders take at least the balance less the buffer, and the check says nothing more. Do not use the tab’s Sales Order column instead: it comes from a different source, for the shop’s own branch only.

Splitting the pool and dedicating stock are not settings. The channel manager does them by hand, with a lower percentage on the shops that must not take everything, or by keeping the dedicated units in a location the channel does not sell from. The channel manager sets them when a shop opens, before every campaign, and whenever the pool changes a lot. You know a split holds when the stock figures the shops show add up to no more than the pool you meant to share: for a Lazada or Shopee shop, its Balance on the item’s Stock Availability tab; for a TikTok Shop or Shopify shop, the stock in its seller centre. You know dedicated stock holds when, at the weekly check, the location that holds it still has the quantity you committed.

On a TikTok Shop or Shopify shop, the stock figure is yours to keep. BigLedger’s stock jobs and the Calculate Stock button send a figure only to Lazada and Shopee shops. On a TikTok or Shopify branch, the buffer and the SO Config Type change the figure BigLedger stores for that shop, and nothing the shop shows. So the job is a person’s:

• Who: the channel manager.
• When: whenever stock arrives, at the end of each day the item sold anywhere else, and before every campaign.
• What: in the seller centre, set each listing’s stock to no more than your stock balance, less the units you have sold on any channel and not yet sent, less the buffer you would have used.
• How you know it is right: at the weekly check, no listing’s stock in the TikTok or Shopify seller centre is above that figure, and the seller centre shows no oversold order.

One thing can overwrite what you keyed. If a TikTok branch has been set to push item changes to the shop (we found no screen that offers this setting), saving a change to the item in BigLedger also sends TikTok the quantity stored on the listing. After editing an item you sell on TikTok Shop, look at the listing’s stock in the seller centre.

Size the buffer from what can sell before BigLedger knows about it. There is no computed figure to copy. Two things decide it:

• Orders arrive faster than stock leaves. A marketplace order is a sales order, and a sales order does not move stock. Nor does a delivery document. The units leave the stock balance when the sales invoice is finalised (or a Sales GIN Stock Out, if your integration ships on one). Until then they still count as available. The deduction for open channel orders only partly helps, because it picks orders by their channel status, not by whether they are still waiting to leave (Core Concepts §3). So it can miss an order you still owe (on Lazada almost no order is counted), or go on counting one that was cancelled or already invoiced: nothing we read changes an order’s status or open quantity when it is invoiced. The held-back check above shows how far it has drifted on your data.
• The shop holds the old figure until the next push.

So a buffer must cover everything the other channels can sell between an order arriving and its stock leaving the balance, plus one push interval. For GadgetSphere’s flagship phone, suppose orders are invoiced twice a day and stock is pushed every two hours. On a normal day that is half a day’s sales across all shops (15) plus two hours’ worth (about 3): a buffer of about 18 units. On a sale day it is ten times that. Raise the buffer the day before a campaign and lower it the day after. Invoicing marketplace orders more often shrinks the buffer you need more than any setting does.

• Who: the channel manager. Set it when a shop opens, review it monthly, and change it before every campaign.
• How you know it is right: no oversold orders in the seller centre over the period. If a buffer-sized gap between the shop and your own figure turns into a much larger gap, run the held-back check above for that item.

An oversell is the channel manager’s decision, and the clock is the platform’s. BigLedger cannot stop an oversell, because it never reserves stock for an order. When one happens, decide the same day:

• Source the unit. Transfer it from a branch.
• Substitute it, with the buyer’s agreement.
• Cancel it. The platform counts a seller cancellation against you (Step 6).

You know it went right when no oversold order was still open at its ship-by date.

Next: Steps 3 to 6, after the order arrives.

What success looks like for this part

There were no oversold orders, each shop’s buffer has been reviewed since the last campaign, and the held-back check on your best sellers shows what you expected.

Common mistakes in this part

Related documentation

• Running an Online Channel: the whole job, with its success check.
• Core Concepts: the stock calculation, the order paths and the gateway payment.
• EcomSync related applets: every job, the setup order and the troubleshooting table.
• Organisation Applet: the marketplace branch and its Stock Configuration.