Month-end stock count: reconciling physical shelves with open sales

A physical stock count breaks whenever a seller treats active marketplace listings as actual stock quantity. One owned unit can have five live asks across StockX, Alias, POIZON, eBay and Shopify. That shoe represents exactly one physical pair in your room, not five.

Never delist valid cross-listings simply because your live asks outnumber your physical shoe boxes. Sibling listings exist to show the same item to separate buyer groups. You can read how to coordinate multiple channels in our guide on avoiding overselling across marketplaces.

Before you touch a single box on your shelf, freeze new manual intake. Your count requires three separate numbers: physical boxes on hand, open confirmed unfulfilled sales, and recorded units in your software. If you combine these numbers into a single column, your month-end accounting figures will be wrong.

Follow this exact sequence to complete your inventory audit without stopping your pricing automation or creating false discrepancies.

1. Record the physical shelf input: Walk your storage shelves with a handheld scanner or your mobile app. Scan the barcode or enter the style code and US size for every physical box present. Count only boxes you can physically touch. Exclude boxes already packed with shipping labels attached.
2. Check confirmed unfulfilled sales: Open your sales dashboard and filter for confirmed orders waiting for dispatch. Match each open order to its specific allocated physical box in your dispatch staging area. Verify that software automation removed the sibling listings across your other marketplaces when each sale confirmed.
3. Act on the counted result: Compare your scanned shelf count against your recorded active stock. If the counts match, your inventory is reconciled. If a scanned pair has no digital record, create an intake record with its original cost and style code. If a software record has no physical box and no open order, flag it as missing and check your shipping history before adjusting quantities.

Software handles real-time tasks, but it cannot see physical theft, damaged boxes, or misplaced inventory. When an order lands on WeTheNew, automated delisting removes the corresponding ask on other platforms. That automated clean-up happens behind the scenes. However, verifying that the physical box on shelf B4 matches the confirmed order requires a manual check.

Never let completion of paperwork change a unit's status back to available. Generating an invoice, booking a carrier collection, or receiving an automated marketplace payout never restores a unit to stock. A sold pair remains sold. If you need to review routine administrative workflows, consult our daily operations checklist for owned stock.

The only valid reasons to return an allocated unit to live inventory are a verified buyer cancellation before dispatch, or a physically received return. Even then, inspect the returned pair manually to confirm the style code, size, and condition before making it available for sale again.