The shop sold it. Why is your website still taking orders?

If your website still offers an item after the shop has sold the last one, check the completed sale, the exact product option and the location supplying the website. Those three records give you a useful starting point. Changing a stock figure before checking them can hide the original problem.

The difficult part usually arrives after someone has promised the goods. A customer has paid online. Your salesperson walks to the shelf and finds a medium where the large should be. Now two people are asking for the same item, and the owner is pulled into a problem that began earlier in the day.

You need a short investigation your team can follow. Here is one that works from the customer’s promise back to the goods.

First, protect the customer’s next decision

Before taking another order for the disputed item, confirm what can actually be supplied. An authorised colleague should pause the affected listing or option if availability is uncertain. Keep the change narrow: one missing size should not make every colour and size disappear.

Find existing orders for that item. Give each waiting customer a named person to handle the next update. Explain the available choices plainly: confirmed replacement, a realistic wait or the appropriate cancellation and refund route. Do not promise that a quantity correction will produce physical stock.

Write down the time the mismatch was noticed, the product, the option and the supplying location. Preserve the sale and order references. That small record makes the next conversation more useful than “the website is wrong”.

Check the counter sale before checking the connection

Open the completed shop sale. Was it finalised, or is it still a draft? Did the cashier select the right item and size? Which location recorded it? A sale entered against Yaba does not explain the stock at Ikeja until you establish how the goods moved.

Look at the quantity and selling unit too. One carton is not one piece. If staff entered a carton as a single piece, the sale may look reasonable while the remaining quantity is overstated.

Then check when the goods left. A customer may have collected an item before the sale was recorded. In that case, the website was relying on an incomplete business record. Finish the correct sale through the normal workflow and deal with the late entry; do not blame a connection that had no recorded movement to follow.

Match the item customers see online

Compare the online product with the shop record. Names alone are weak evidence. Use the SKU or the connected product reference, then confirm size, colour, design and unit.

If your team sells a navy flask and a black flask, photograph labels can make them look alike. The online image may be wrong even when the stock figure is right. Check the product description, option label and media alongside the quantity.

Confirm the supplying location. A warehouse may have stock while the shop has none; that can be a valid selling arrangement if the warehouse genuinely fulfils those orders. It becomes a problem when the customer is promised immediate shop collection from goods held somewhere else.

Use the checks for your website’s actual selling path

For an IGFirstERP Website, review the products and location selected for that website. Check the availability shown for the same product option, then confirm that the selling and fulfilment arrangement matches what customers are promised.

For a WooCommerce website, check the connected store, matched product or variation and selected stock location. Review monitoring for waiting or failed work and use the existing recovery instructions for the specific exception. Repeatedly editing both sides makes it harder to identify which change was meant to be authoritative.

A successful update is only part of the answer. The stock must belong to the correct item and location. A perfectly delivered update to the wrong size will still disappoint the customer.

Keep a short result beside the investigation: what was recorded, what the website showed, what was corrected and who checked it. An owner should be able to understand the incident without joining every support conversation.

A worked example: the last navy flask

This is a fictional teaching example, not a customer result. Harbour Trade Stores has one navy 750ml flask available in Ikeja. Ada completes a sale for that exact item. The online page still lets a shopper select it.

Bisi checks the sale and confirms the item, quantity and location. She then compares the online option and discovers that its supplying location is the warehouse, which still has three. The figures describe different shelves. The team must decide if warehouse fulfilment is suitable for the customer’s promised collection time.

In a different version of the same example, the website is correctly supplied from Ikeja, but the sale was left as a draft. That needs the cashier to finish the actual sale. In a third version, the WooCommerce update is waiting for recovery. These are different causes, so they need different actions.

The lesson is to establish the cause before making the numbers agree. Matching figures are not useful if they describe the wrong goods or hide an unfinished sale.

Test the repair with one controlled item

Use demonstration data or an agreed test item. Record the expected starting quantity and its location. Complete one supported sale, then check the same item online. If a return or transfer is part of the setup, test it separately so the result is easy to interpret.

For WooCommerce, include monitoring in the check. If work is waiting or failed, capture its actual status and follow the documented recovery path. Allow for the configured connection behaviour; do not promise instant results without measuring the path you are using.

Record the test time, sale reference and outcome. A screenshot of “available” without the item and location does not prove the repair. Your team needs a repeatable check they can use after the next setup change.

Avoid these shortcuts

Do not reduce the quantity just to stop the complaint, swap product mappings by name alone or assume all branches supply every order. Do not mark a customer’s payment as a completed sale unless the order has actually passed the required steps. And do not treat a paused listing as a finished investigation.

Keep the customer informed while the team works. An accurate update today is better than a confident promise that the next shift cannot fulfil.

You are done when…

• The completed sale shows the correct product, option, unit and location.
• The website offers goods from the location you intend to fulfil from.
• Waiting orders have an owner and a realistic next step.
• Any connection exception has a recorded cause and recovery result.
• A controlled test shows the expected availability for the same item.

Make the next working day easier

See how shop and website stock work together. Ready to try the steps? Open the website and WooCommerce recovery guide.