Amazon

Using the inventory ledger to catch phantom stock

Most inventory problems are not really inventory problems. They are reporting problems, where two systems hold different numbers and neither is obviously wrong.

Balances lie, movements do not

A stock balance is a summary, and summaries hide the thing you need: what changed, when, and why. The inventory ledger reports movements - received, adjusted, removed, damaged, found - and that is what lets you reconstruct how a discrepancy arose.

If your balance is wrong, looking at the balance harder will not tell you why. The ledger will.

What to look for

• Receipts that do not match what you sent
• Adjustments with no obvious cause
• Units marked unfulfillable that you were not told about
• Removals you did not request
• Long gaps between shipment and receipt

Adjustments are where most surprises live. They are routine, they are often correct, and they are also where reimbursable losses hide.

Stranded inventory

Stock that exists physically but is not attached to an active listing is stranded - it cannot sell, and it accrues storage costs while it waits. The usual causes are a listing that got suppressed, a pricing error, or a category restriction applied after the fact.

Nothing pushes this into your attention. It shows up as products that mysteriously stopped selling, and the cause is that they are no longer buyable.

Reconciling on a schedule

Monthly is enough for most sellers, and it needs to be a fixed habit rather than a response to a problem, because by the time a discrepancy is obvious the evidence is old.

1. Pull the ledger for the period
2. Match receipts against what you shipped in
3. List every adjustment and categorise it
4. Flag anything unexplained for a claim
5. Check for stranded units and fix the listings

Claims have deadlines

Reimbursement for lost or damaged units is time-limited. A discrepancy you find eight months later may be real and unrecoverable. That is the practical argument for a monthly rhythm rather than an annual one - the money is only claimable while it is fresh.

For dropshippers

If you hold no stock, most of this is not your problem, and that is genuinely one of the advantages of the model. It becomes relevant the moment you start sending anything into FBA, including a small test batch of a proven product.

The mistake is treating that first FBA shipment as a minor extension of what you already do. It introduces an entire second discipline - inventory reconciliation - that dropshipping does not require, and it needs its own routine from day one.

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