In this tutorial we are going to see how to solve stock synchronization problems when we combine WooCommerce with a local store.
Reasons to keep inventories in sync
We all know that keeping a store’s stock up to date is a key factor for its proper functioning. What is desirable if we have an eCommerce is that the stock of products that we keep in the warehouse matches perfectly with the one that appears in our online store.
Of course, this is also essential in business cases that combine traditional commerce and an online store. And it is that here we also find an added problem. The stock of our physical store and our eCommerce must be synchronized at all times.
Let’s give an example, let’s imagine that we have one unit of an article left. It is any given day and a customer enters our premises and buys this last unit. With the daily hustle and bustle we don’t have time to update the stock in WooCommerce so the product remains on sale. Meanwhile, another customer places an order and buys that same item through our online store since it continues to appear in stock even though we no longer have it available.
If you have experienced this, you will be clear about the consequences of not having the stock synchronized. The first and most important is that we are going to cause unnecessary inconvenience to a client who has trusted us. Only this reason would be enough to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but the thing does not stop there.
In addition, we will have to spend time managing the incident, trying to provide an alternative solution or making the return. In any case, this could negatively affect our business and the relationship with our customers. So we are going to see three possible solutions that will help us synchronize the stock of WooCommerce with that of our store at street level.
Synchronize stocks in WooCommerce and physical store manually
The first solution consists in the manual adjustment of the stock. It is the most basic and simple way a priori since to modify our stock manually in WooCommerce it is not necessary to install anything else.
The only thing we would have to do when a customer made a purchase at our store would be to go to WooCommerce and update the stock of the products purchased to match the actual inventory, and we would already have the stock synchronized.
But let’s be realistic, it is very likely that we will not be able to update the stock immediately when making the sale in our physical store. We may have other customers to attend to, phone calls to us, or other business to take care of.
In 5 minutes we can find ourselves with the same problem again and have to solve another incident. In addition, when we are manipulating the stock directly, the chances of making mistakes increase.
Perhaps we could solve it by associating the sales to a fictitious customer with whom we have previously logged in, in addition to this, the sale would be reflected in WooCommerce. On the other hand, what happens if someone buys from us online? Do we have to constantly check our inventory before selling a product in the physical store? It is clear that this is not an agile method to carry it out in a business and it has some notable shortcomings. So we are going to see the next solution, much more appropriate and efficient.
Synchronize stocks in physical and online stores with WooCommerce POS
As we can see, updating the inventory manually is not a very advisable method when it comes to keeping our stocks synchronized. A good alternative, however, is to use the WooCommerce POS (Point Of Sale) plugin, which has a very practical free version and a paid version that provides extra features.
The free version is available for download at , and offers a simple point-of-sale (POS) terminal interface for WooCommerce. This will allow us to easily sell in our physical store while our inventory is automatically updated, which favors the correct synchronization of stocks and considerably reduces the errors that can occur with manual management.
Another advantage of WooCommerce POS is that it is tremendously agile. With this plugin we will locate the products of our eCommerce almost instantly since our inventory is loaded locally, which speeds up the search and filtering of products. In fact, we can add them to the cart without even reloading the screen.
In addition to placing orders, it offers us the possibility of assigning said sales to a specific customer, applying discounts, writing notes on an order, of course finalizing the purchase, and some other utility.
WooCommerce POS is really interesting for businesses that need to combine online sales and physical store sales, and it is specially designed for them. If you want to learn how to use this plugin and discover all the possibilities it offers, we recommend you take a look at the fourth class of the . And now we are going to see the last proposal.
Synchronize stocks with TradeGecko
The last option we are going to see is called TradeGecko. It is a stock management software that integrates very well with WooCommerce and that, among other things, will allow us to optimize and streamline the management and synchronization of the stock of our stores since everything is done centrally.
In addition, TradeGecko is an online application and is located in the cloud, so we can connect to its control panel from any location with internet. The idea is to upload our products and integrate with WooCommerce to be able to create orders or make stock changes that automatically update the inventory.
On the other hand, it is a paid tool. It has several pricing plans depending on the number of users that we want to access the administration panel, or the number of stores that we need to incorporate, among other factors.
Even so, it is a software that will allow us to work much more efficiently and save a lot of time if we have to manage the inventory of several warehouses, so in those cases it is especially recommended.
Summary and conclusion
Properly synchronizing the stock of our physical and online store is essential for the proper functioning of our business. In this tutorial we have seen three options to do it with WooCommerce. On the one hand, there is the manual way, which is the least advisable since it is tedious and inefficient.
A very good alternative would be to use the WooCommerce POS plugin that allows us to easily sell in our store while keeping our online inventory synchronized. This is an agile solution and reduces manual management errors. If you want to see it working and learn how to use it, you can take a look at the .
Finally, we could contract a plan in TradeGecko, a software in the cloud to manage the inventory of our stores centrally. This solution is especially interesting when we have to synchronize products located in different warehouses.
We hope this tutorial has been useful to you and helps you find a solution to stock synchronization problems in the event that you have a physical and online store. And you already know it, we recommend you visit , you will have access to more than 6047 videos about WooCommerce, WordPress or marketing in general 😉
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