Poor Inventory Visibility: 6 Common Causes and How to Fix Them

Key Takeaways

• Poor inventory visibility leads to overselling, mis-picks, and lost sales

• Paper and manual processes are major causes of inaccurate stock

• Syncing your ecommerce site to your warehouse gives customers accurate info about what’s available for sale

• Barcode scanning, alerts, and automated reporting increase visibility and prevent errors

• Brands like Goodfair, JOELLE, DISSH, and Blue Bungalow have improved accuracy and throughput with the Descartes Peoplevox WMS

If you’re running fulfillment for a fast-growing ecommerce brand, you already know the pressure: customers expect fast delivery, your team is stretched thin, and every mis-pick or out-of-stock creates a ripple effect through your business.

Inventory visibility isn’t just a buzzword. It’s the foundation of scaling with confidence. When inventory is off, everything suffers: customer experience, revenue, staff morale, and your ability to grow without chaos.

This article is for operations leaders, warehouse managers, and systems owners who are tired of reactive firefighting and want proactive control. We’ll show you the six most common reasons stock accuracy breaks down and how other brands have solved these issues.

Inventory visibility means having a clear, accurate, and real-time view of all your stock. This includes what you have, where it is, and whether it’s available to sell.

It’s not just about knowing that you own 100 units of a product. It’s about knowing which 100 units are sellable, where they’re stored, and how that number changes as orders are received, picked, packed, or returned.

Think of it like using GPS instead of a printed map. A GPS updates in real time and tells you where you are, what’s ahead, and if there are any traffic issues to avoid. A printed map shows you where things should be, but it doesn’t help if something’s changed.

In your warehouse, that difference matters, especially when customers are expecting fast, reliable fulfillment.

Picture this: A customer places an order online, excited about their purchase. The next day, they get an email: “Sorry, your item is out of stock.” Frustrated, they take their money elsewhere and leave a one-star review. Sound familiar?

This situation happens far too often. And in nearly every case, the root cause is the same: poor inventory visibility. It damages trust, creates chaos in the warehouse, and costs you sales.

Let’s unpack the most common issues and how to fix them.

When goods-in isn’t verified against purchase orders, you’re relying on guesswork. One missing SKU or extra item can throw your entire inventory count off.

How to solve it: Use a barcode-based warehouse management system (WMS) that cross-checks deliveries against POs. For example, with Peoplevox WMS, items are scanned and logged upon receipt, creating a verified audit trail.

It works: Blue Bungalow transitioned from a paper-heavy receiving process to structured, barcode-scanned goods-in with the Peoplevox WMS. They now trust the system to reflect real-time inventory, reducing miscounts and guesswork. Read their story.

Goods get dropped in random places with no assigned location. “Just for now” turns into days or weeks of stock drifting through the warehouse. Without structured putaway, chaos spreads.

How to solve it: Implement location-based putaway rules in your WMS. This ensures that every item is scanned into a specific bin, reducing the chances of misplacement or confusion.

It works: At Amaroso Boutique, growing order volumes and ad-hoc item placement led to long onboarding times and daily confusion about where items were stored. After implementing Peoplevox, they introduced structured putaway and scalable pick-face logic—transforming operations and making new staff productive on day one. Read their story.

Paper-based processes make it impossible to maintain real-time accuracy. Remember the map example we talked about earlier? From scribbled notes to lost pick slips, paper leads to unnecessary delays, duplication of effort, and human errors.

How to solve it: Digitize picking, packing, and putaway using mobile scanning devices. This eliminates manual updates and reduces the risk of human error.

It works: Goodfair reduced a 14,000-order backlog to 3,000 and boosted daily shipments from 200 to 800 by eliminating paper and adopting Peoplevox WMS. Read the full story.

Overselling and underselling happen when your storefront and warehouse aren’t synced. Not only do you lose sales, you lose customer trust.

How to solve it: Integrate your WMS with your ecommerce platform (like Shopify or Adobe Commerce) to keep stock levels synced in real time.

It works: JOELLE Collection tripled order output using the Peoplevox WMS integrated with Shopify, ensuring that what customers see is what they actually get. See how they did it.

Without clear systems, errors go unreported, and stock counts get worse over time. A single unscanned write-off snowballs into weeks of guesswork and headaches.

How to solve it: Use skip and problem-item functionality in your WMS. This allows your team to flag and bypass issues while maintaining an audit trail for follow-up.

It works: At Fishing Tackle and Bait, missing and misallocated stock was a constant challenge during peak sales. After switching to Peoplevox, they gained full control over damaged and misplaced items, cutting customer service queries by 70% and finally offering next-day delivery with confidence. Read the story.

Without real-time visibility, your decisions are based on yesterday’s numbers or worse. Problems go undetected, pickers waste time, and reporting becomes a guessing game.

How to solve it: Leverage live dashboards and reporting within your WMS to monitor order flow, identify bottlenecks, and track team productivity.

It works: DISSH boosted fulfillment productivity by 45% by implementing Peoplevox and ditching static storage, giving them live insights and reducing time to action. Explore the results.

Inventory inaccuracy isn’t just a warehouse problem. It’s a customer experience problem. But it’s also solvable.

With the Descartes Peoplevox WMS, fast-growing ecommerce brands gain the inventory visibility they need to scale with confidence. Ready to stop firefighting and start winning?