Industry
7 RecipesRecipes for retail data engineering, including stock availability and ownership, shelf-life allocation, sales margins, and marketplace and till settlement.
Planners cannot see which lots are close to expiry, how much of each is still usable, or how much will go unallocated, so stock is written off that a customer could have taken.
Gross sales minus original item cost overstates order margin because refunds and returns arrive after the order.
A supplier owns stock until it sells, that stock shares a store and SKU with stock we bought outright, and the stock report adds the two together.
Finance cannot say what each marketplace order settled for or what is still owed, because fees, refunds, chargebacks and reserves are netted into payouts.
Stores count each till at shift close and Finance cannot tell which shortages are real and which come from how the POS records voids, refunds, change and float moves.
Customer service promises stock that is already reserved, or sells the same units twice because reservations that expired or shipped still count against availability.
Planners cannot tell which items are about to run out because sell-through and stock-outs live in spreadsheets, and each one counts a day with no stock differently.