Here's a scenario every multi-vendor retailer knows: you ordered 24 units of a top-selling item. The box arrives, your team unpacks it, puts it on the shelf. The invoice says 24. You pay for 24. But there were only 20 in the box.
Four units at $15 wholesale is $60 out of your pocket. Multiply that across 30 vendors and 4 buying seasons, and you're looking at thousands of dollars in invisible losses every year.
Why it happens
Vendors don't short-ship on purpose (usually). Warehouses make mistakes. Items get backordered and nobody updates the invoice. Sometimes sizes or colors are substituted without notice. The problem isn't malice — it's that nobody catches it.
When your receiving process is "unpack the box and put it on the shelf," discrepancies slip through. By the time you notice, the invoice is paid and the vendor says it's too late to adjust.
How to catch it
The fix is simple: verify quantities at the moment of receiving, before you pay the invoice. Open the PO on a tablet. Count what's in the box. Tap to confirm each line item. If the quantity doesn't match, you know immediately.
Inventor-Ease flags discrepancies the moment they happen. Ordered 24, received 20? The system catches it and marks it for follow-up. You have the documentation to go back to the vendor before the invoice is due.
The real savings
Our customers tell us short shipment detection alone pays for Inventor-Ease. When you're catching $50-100 in discrepancies per shipment across dozens of vendors, the math gets obvious fast. It's not glamorous — but it's the kind of boring, important work that protects your margins.