Inventory drift starts when two systems disagree about what exists.

• →Counts reconcile weekly instead of continuously, so drift compounds between checks.
• →A manual adjustment in one system doesn’t propagate to the others.
• →Staff pad orders defensively because they don’t trust the on-hand count.
• →A customer is quoted availability that doesn’t actually exist.

• →Propagating inventory changes to every connected system in near real time.
• →Flagging discrepancies between systems immediately rather than at the next count.
• →Blocking or warning on orders that would oversell available inventory.

• →Investigating and resolving the root cause of a discrepancy.
• →Approving inventory write-offs or adjustments above a threshold.

Discrepancies above a defined threshold pause automatic sync and route to a person for investigation instead of auto-resolving in either direction.

The WMS is authoritative for physical on-hand inventory; order and reporting systems sync from it, not the reverse.

Connect the WMS to order management and reporting systems for near-real-time sync, with discrepancy alerts and an oversell guard on the order side.

Estimate using: current drift rate between reconciliations x cost of defensive over-ordering, plus hours spent per week manually reconciling counts across systems.