Why Most Order Management Systems Get the Inventory Commit Step Wrong

Every business that manages physical inventory faces a deceptively simple question: when should the system record that stock has been used?

It’s a question most order management systems answer badly. Some deduct inventory the moment an order is placed. Others wait until the parcel leaves the dock. Both approaches create problems that ripple through your entire operation—from warehouse accuracy to customer satisfaction to financial reporting.

The consequences aren’t trivial. According to the Auburn University RFID Lab, average retail inventory accuracy sits at just 63%. That means more than one-third of the time, what your system thinks you have doesn’t match what’s actually on the shelf. The IHL Group pegs the global cost of inventory distortion at $1.77 trillion annually. For Australian SMBs operating on tight margins, even small discrepancies compound into serious financial impacts.

The root cause? Most systems conflate two fundamentally different actions: reserving stock (earmarking it for a specific order) and committing stock (permanently adjusting inventory levels). Understanding the difference—and implementing it correctly—is the key to inventory accuracy.

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What Is the “Commit” Step?

In order management, the commit is the moment inventory levels are permanently adjusted in your system. It’s the point where the system records that stock has been consumed, allocated, or otherwise removed from available inventory. Once committed, those units are gone from your books.

This is distinct from other inventory-related actions:

• Reservation earmarks stock for a specific order but doesn’t permanently deduct it
• Picking is the physical warehouse action of pulling items from shelves
• Shipping is when the order physically leaves your facility
• Invoicing is the financial transaction recording the sale

The commit is the accounting event that says: “This inventory is no longer ours to sell.”

Most businesses understand these are different steps. The problem is their software doesn’t. Order management systems routinely treat commit as an automatic side-effect of order creation or shipment, rather than as a deliberate, auditable action that happens at the right moment in the workflow.

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The Three Approaches to Inventory Commitment

There are three common patterns for when systems commit inventory:

1. Immediate Deduction (Commit at Order Placement)

The system deducts inventory the moment an order is created. If a customer orders 50 units, your available stock drops by 50 instantly.

Pros:

• Simple to implement
• Prevents overselling (you can’t create orders if stock isn’t available)
• Stock levels always reflect “uncommitted” inventory

Cons:

• Creates phantom discrepancies between system and physical counts
• Cancelled orders require manual inventory adjustments
• Returns become complicated (was the inventory already restored?)
• Makes it difficult to distinguish between “stock on the shelf” and “stock allocated but not yet picked”

2. Ship-Time Deduction (Commit at Shipment)

Inventory is only deducted when the order physically ships. Until then, stock levels remain unchanged.

Pros:

• System stock matches physical warehouse count (until shipment)
• Cancellations don’t require adjustments
• Straightforward for businesses with same-day fulfillment

Cons:

• High risk of overselling during peak periods
• Multiple orders can compete for the same physical units
• Inventory appears “available” even when it’s already committed to orders
• Warehouse staff can’t easily see what’s truly available vs what’s spoken for

3. Two-Phase Commit (Reserve First, Commit Later)

Stock is reserved when an order is finalised, creating a separate “reserved” quantity. Inventory is then committed as a distinct, deliberate action—typically before or during picking.

Pros:

• Prevents overselling (reserved stock is unavailable to other orders)
• Maintains accuracy between system and physical counts
• Provides a review window before permanent commitment
• Supports approval workflows and batch processing
• Easy to reverse reservations without affecting committed inventory

Cons:

• Requires more sophisticated inventory tracking (available, reserved, committed)
• Adds an extra step to the workflow
• Needs clear policies about when commit happens

Here’s how these approaches compare in practice:

Approach	Overselling Risk	System/Physical Match	Cancel Complexity	Approval Support
Immediate Deduction	Low	Poor (diverges immediately)	High (requires adjustments)	No
Ship-Time Deduction	High	Good (until shipment)	Low	Limited
Two-Phase Commit	Low	Excellent	Low	Yes

The two-phase approach is how manufacturing resource planning (MRP) systems have handled inventory for decades. It’s proven, well-understood, and solves the fundamental tension between preventing overselling and maintaining accurate counts.

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What Goes Wrong with Immediate Deduction

Immediate deduction seems appealingly simple: order placed equals stock consumed. The problem is it treats the system as the source of truth, ignoring physical reality.

The Ghost Stock Problem

Consider a wholesale distributor that takes an order Monday morning for 500 units of a product. The warehouse team won’t pick the order until Thursday (standard lead time). The moment the order is created, the system deducts 500 units.

From Monday to Thursday, those 500 units sit physically on the shelf, but the system says they’re gone. When another customer calls Tuesday asking about availability, the customer service rep sees “50 units available” when there are actually 550 units in the warehouse. The business loses a potential sale because the system can’t distinguish between “allocated but not yet picked” and “truly available.”

This is ghost stock—inventory that exists physically but is invisible in the system.

The Cancellation Nightmare

What happens when that wholesale order is cancelled on Wednesday?

In an immediate deduction system, someone needs to manually add 500 units back into inventory. This requires:

• Noticing the cancellation (not always guaranteed if orders are cancelled via email or phone)
• Creating a manual stock adjustment transaction
• Recording the reason for the adjustment (for audit purposes)
• Hoping the person doing the adjustment enters the correct quantity

Every manual step is an opportunity for error. A typo means your inventory count is now wrong. A missed cancellation means 500 phantom units have disappeared from your system permanently.

The Returns Guessing Game

Returns processing becomes ambiguous. When a customer returns 20 units from that 500-unit order, has the inventory already been deducted? (Yes, on Monday.) Has it been physically shipped and returned? (Maybe.) Should you add 20 units back now, or were they already restored when the order was cancelled?

Without a clear separation between reservation and commitment, every return requires someone to investigate the order history and make a judgment call. That’s time-consuming and error-prone.

Inventory Audits Show Discrepancies

During a physical stocktake, the warehouse counts 550 units on the shelf. The system shows 50. The difference is the 500 units allocated to orders that haven’t shipped yet.

But how do you reconcile this? You can’t simply adjust the system to 550—that would make the allocated stock available for other orders. You need to:

1. List all pending orders
2. Calculate total reserved quantity
3. Add that to the system’s “available” count
4. Compare to the physical count
5. Investigate any remaining discrepancies

This turns a simple stocktake into a multi-hour accounting exercise. And if someone makes a mistake in step 2 or 3, your inventory accuracy is compromised.

Real-World Impact

A Melbourne-based distributor we spoke with experienced this firsthand. They used a legacy system that deducted inventory at order creation. During their busy period (December), they processed 200-300 orders per day with a typical 2-3 day fulfillment window.

At any given time, they had 600-900 orders in “pending pick” status. The system showed dramatically lower inventory than what was physically in the warehouse. Customer service staff couldn’t confidently quote availability. Warehouse staff routinely found products the system claimed were out of stock.

Their workaround? A daily manual report that added back all pending order quantities to calculate “real” available inventory. This report took 45 minutes to generate each morning and was out of date by lunchtime. When they finally moved to a two-phase system, stocktake time dropped from eight hours to ninety minutes.

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What Goes Wrong with Ship-Time Deduction

Ship-time deduction keeps the system count aligned with physical reality right up until the moment goods leave the building. That sounds ideal, but it creates a different set of problems.

The Classic Overselling Scenario

An ecommerce retailer runs a 24-hour flash sale on a popular product. They have 30 units in stock. The system shows “In Stock” on the website.

Over the course of the sale, 50 customers place orders. Because inventory isn’t deducted until shipment, all 50 orders are accepted. The system still shows the product as available.

The next morning, the warehouse team starts picking. They pull 30 orders, pack them, and ship them. At the moment of shipment, the system finally deducts inventory. The count drops to zero.

Now someone has to contact 20 customers to apologise, issue refunds, and deal with the reputational damage. For products with longer lead times or custom configurations, customers might have been waiting weeks before discovering their order can’t be fulfilled.

The Available-But-Not-Really Problem

With ship-time deduction, inventory appears “available” even when it’s already been committed to existing orders. This creates confusion across the business:

• Sales teams quote availability that doesn’t account for pending orders
• Purchasing teams under-order replacement stock because the system shows adequate inventory
• Customer service can’t give confident delivery estimates because they don’t know if stock is truly available or spoken for
• Warehouse teams receive picking instructions for items that have already been allocated to earlier orders

Partial Shipments and Backordering

When an order ships partially (10 units of a 50-unit order), the system deducts 10 units. The remaining 40 units are… what, exactly?

In an immediate-deduction system, they were already deducted (and need to be added back if the backorder is cancelled). In a ship-time system, they’re still showing as “available” inventory, even though they’re committed to this specific customer.

Now suppose a second customer orders 50 units. The system shows 60 units available (30 physical units plus the 30 units that haven’t shipped on the first order yet). The second order is accepted. The warehouse goes to pick it and discovers they’re 20 units short.

Returns and Refunds

Returns processing is equally problematic. When does the inventory get added back?

If you add it back when the customer initiates the return, your system count will be higher than physical count until the goods arrive. If you wait until the goods are received, your system shows lower inventory than reality, potentially losing sales.

And what about refunds without returns (damaged in shipping, customer decides to keep a defective unit at a discount)? The inventory was never deducted, so there’s nothing to add back, but you’ve lost a unit of saleable inventory. This requires manual adjustments and creates reconciliation headaches.

Real-World Impact

A Sydney-based furniture retailer used a ship-time deduction system for years. They sold both online and in a showroom. Showroom staff would check the system to see if a display model could be sold or needed to be kept for display purposes.

During a busy weekend, two showroom sales staff sold the same display couch to different customers within an hour of each other. Both checked the system; both saw “1 available.” Neither realised that unit was already allocated to an online order placed Friday night that would ship Monday.

The result: two unhappy customers, one emergency order from the supplier (at a premium cost), and one very long conversation about how their inventory system actually worked. They switched to a two-phase system within the month.

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The Two-Phase Approach: Reserve Then Commit

The two-phase commit pattern separates reservation (earmarking stock) from commitment (permanently adjusting inventory). This mirrors how inventory actually moves through your business.

Phase 1: Reserve (Finalize the Order)

When an order is finalised—whether that’s at checkout, after credit approval, or when a sales quote is accepted—the system reserves the required inventory.

Reserved stock is:

• Not available for other orders to claim
• Still physically in the warehouse
• Reversible (if the order is cancelled)
• Tracked separately from committed inventory

The system now tracks three quantities instead of one:

Total On Hand = all physical inventory in the location Reserved = inventory allocated to specific orders but not yet committed Available to Promise (ATP) = Total On Hand minus Reserved minus Committed

When a new order comes in, the system checks ATP, not just total inventory. This prevents overselling while maintaining accurate physical counts.

Phase 2: Commit (Permanently Adjust Inventory)

At some point before or during picking, the business makes a deliberate decision to commit the inventory. This is the “point of no return”—inventory counts are now permanently adjusted.

The commit action:

• Deducts from Total On Hand
• Removes from Reserved
• Creates an auditable inventory transaction
• Cannot be automatically reversed (uncommit requires approval and documentation)

When this commit happens varies by business:

• Just-in-time commit: At the moment picking starts
• Batch commit: Once per day (e.g., all orders finalised before 2 PM are committed at 2:30 PM)
• Approval-based commit: After a manager reviews high-value or unusual orders
• Automatic commit: For low-risk orders that meet certain criteria (value under $X, standard products, etc.)

The key is that commit is a deliberate, observable action, not an automatic side-effect.

Why Separation Matters

Separating reserve and commit provides three critical benefits:

1. A Review Window

Between reservation and commitment, you have time to:

• Verify credit status
• Confirm custom specifications
• Check for order entry errors
• Run fraud checks
• Ensure all required approvals are in place

If anything is wrong, you can cancel the order and release the reservation without touching inventory levels. No adjustments, no audit trail complexity, no risk of errors.

2. Accurate Availability

Because reserved stock is tracked separately, the system can accurately answer questions like:

• How much can I sell right now? (ATP)
• How much is in the warehouse? (Total On Hand)
• How much is spoken for but not yet picked? (Reserved)
• How much has been consumed by orders? (Committed)

This means customer service can confidently quote lead times, purchasing can accurately forecast replacement stock, and warehouse managers can plan pick schedules without guessing what’s “real” available inventory.

3. Reversibility with Accountability

Reservations are easy to reverse—it’s just moving a number from “Reserved” back to “Available.” No permanent inventory impact, minimal audit trail required.

Commits are deliberately hard to reverse. Uncommitting inventory should require manager approval and a documented reason because it represents a significant inventory transaction. This creates accountability while still allowing correction of genuine mistakes.

The Concept of Deliberate Commitment

The most important aspect of two-phase commit is that the commit step is intentional. Someone (or some automated process with clear rules) makes a decision: “Yes, we are going to fulfil this order, and we are now recording the inventory consumption.”

This might seem like bureaucratic overhead, but it’s the opposite. It’s acknowledging that inventory commitment is a significant business event that deserves explicit handling, not something that should happen invisibly as a side-effect of order creation or shipment.

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Why the Commit Step Needs to Be Deliberate

Treating commit as a first-class operation rather than an automatic side-effect enables several important capabilities.

Automated vs Manual Commit

Not all orders are created equal. A system that forces you to manually commit every order is too slow. A system that automatically commits everything removes control. The answer is conditional automation.

For example, you might automatically commit orders that meet all these criteria:

• Value under $1,000
• Standard products (not custom or made-to-order)
• Credit-approved customer
• All line items in stock

But require manual commit for orders that:

• Exceed $5,000 in value
• Include backordered items
• Are from new customers
• Require special shipping arrangements
• Include discontinued products

This gives you speed for routine orders and control for exceptions.

Approval Workflows

For high-value or unusual orders, you might require manager sign-off before commit. The workflow looks like:

1. Sales rep creates order (reservation happens automatically)
2. Manager receives notification
3. Manager reviews order details, customer credit status, inventory availability
4. Manager approves or rejects
5. If approved, commit happens automatically; if rejected, reservation is released

This ensures expensive inventory isn’t committed without oversight, while still preventing overselling (the reservation holds the stock during the review period).

Batch Processing

Some businesses benefit from batch commits. For example:

• All orders placed before 2 PM are committed at 2:30 PM (giving a review window)
• All international orders are committed Monday/Thursday when the freight consolidator picks up
• All custom orders are committed when manufacturing confirms completion

Batching creates predictable workflows for warehouse teams and allows for coordination between ordering and fulfillment processes.

The Audit Trail

Every commit should create a permanent record that includes:

• Which order it relates to
• Which inventory items and quantities were affected
• When the commit happened
• Who (or what automated process) initiated it
• What the inventory levels were before and after

This audit trail is essential for:

• Financial reconciliation: Your inventory value changed; when and why?
• Dispute resolution: Customer claims they never received an order that shows as shipped; when was inventory actually committed?
• Process improvement: How long is the gap between reservation and commit? Is it consistent?
• Compliance: For regulated industries, demonstrating chain of custody

The commit is as important as an invoice or a payment receipt. It should be logged with the same rigour.

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Industry Context and Research

The two-phase commit pattern isn’t new or experimental. It’s well-established in supply chain management literature and has been implemented in manufacturing systems for decades.

Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP)

MRP systems have used reservation-then-commitment since the 1980s. When a production order is created, raw materials are allocated to that order. They remain in the raw materials inventory location but are unavailable for other production orders.

When production begins, the materials are issued to the work order. This is the commit step—the materials are consumed and removed from inventory. The work-in-progress inventory account increases by the value of the materials.

This two-phase approach prevents production delays (materials are reserved and won’t be used elsewhere) while maintaining accurate inventory locations (materials stay in the warehouse until they’re actually needed on the factory floor).

The same pattern applies to finished goods. When a work order is completed, finished goods are added to inventory. When a sales order ships, those goods are committed and removed from inventory.

Manufacturing has long understood that reservation and commitment are distinct operations. It’s puzzling that order management systems for distribution businesses haven’t universally adopted the same approach.

Inventory Accuracy Statistics

The Auburn University RFID Lab’s research on retail inventory accuracy consistently shows that the average accuracy is around 63%. That means 37% of the time, the system’s inventory count doesn’t match the physical count.

The primary causes of inaccuracy are:

• Transaction errors: Incorrect data entry when receiving, shipping, or adjusting inventory
• Shrinkage: Theft, damage, or loss not recorded in the system
• Timing mismatches: The system records a transaction at a different time than it physically occurs

Timing mismatches are especially common in systems that don’t separate reservation from commitment. If inventory is deducted at order creation but the order won’t ship for three days, any physical count during those three days will show a discrepancy.

Two-phase commit reduces timing mismatches by keeping the system count aligned with physical reality until the moment inventory is actually consumed.

The Cost of Inventory Distortion

The IHL Group’s research on inventory distortion quantifies the financial impact. In their 2023 report, they estimated global retail inventory distortion (the gap between recorded and actual inventory) cost $1.77 trillion annually.

This includes:

• Overstocks: Inventory purchased unnecessarily because the system under-reported actual stock
• Stockouts: Lost sales because the system over-reported available inventory
• Markdowns: Excess inventory sold at a discount to clear it
• Obsolescence: Inventory that expires or becomes unsaleable before it can be sold

For Australian SMBs, even a 1% improvement in inventory accuracy can have significant bottom-line impact. A business with $5 million in annual inventory turns could save $50,000 per year in reduced markdowns and lost sales.

Supply Chain Best Practices

Industry bodies like APICS (Association for Supply Chain Management) explicitly recommend separating allocation from consumption in their body of knowledge frameworks. The APICS Dictionary defines:

• Allocation: Designating inventory for a specific order or project
• Consumption: The actual reduction of inventory when goods are used or shipped

These are treated as distinct concepts with different timing and implications. Two-phase commit is the operational implementation of this conceptual separation.

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Practical Implementation

If you’re evaluating order management systems or considering how to improve your current processes, here’s what to look for.

Key Capabilities for Proper Commit Handling

A system that handles commits correctly should provide:

1. Separate Inventory Views

You should be able to see, at any time:

• Total inventory (physical count)
• Reserved inventory (allocated to orders not yet committed)
• Committed inventory (permanently deducted)
• Available to Promise (what you can sell right now)

If the system only shows one number (“X units available”), it’s almost certainly doing commit incorrectly.

2. Explicit Commit Action

There should be a button, workflow step, or API call that says “Commit this order” or “Commit these line items.” It should be something you can point to and say, “This is when inventory was permanently deducted.”

If inventory just silently changes when you click “Create Order” or “Mark as Shipped,” you don’t have proper commit control.

3. Commit Audit Trail

Every commit should create a transaction record that shows:

• Order reference
• Item(s) and quantities committed
• Timestamp
• User who initiated (or note that it was automatic)
• Before/after inventory levels

You should be able to generate a report of all commits in a date range, filtered by product, customer, or order type.

4. Uncommit Capability

Mistakes happen. You should be able to reverse a commit, but it should:

• Require explicit permission (manager approval, special user role, etc.)
• Require a documented reason
• Create an audit trail entry for the reversal
• Be logged as a separate transaction (not just deleting the original commit)

If uncommitting is too easy, you lose accountability. If it’s impossible, you can’t correct genuine errors.

5. Bulk Commit Options

For businesses with high order volumes, committing orders one at a time is impractical. The system should support:

• Batch commit (select multiple orders and commit all at once)
• Scheduled commit (automatically commit all orders in a certain status at a specified time)
• Conditional commit (commit all orders that meet criteria X, Y, Z)

This allows you to scale commit operations without sacrificing control.

6. Integration with Picking Workflows

Ideally, commit should happen automatically as part of the picking workflow. For example:

• Warehouse staff scans the pick list barcode
• System creates pick wave and commits inventory for all orders in the wave
• Staff picks items, scans to confirm
• Orders move to packing status

This ensures commit happens at the right moment (just before physical picking starts) without requiring a separate manual step.

Red Flags in System Evaluation

When evaluating a potential order management system, these are warning signs that commit handling is poorly designed:

Only One Inventory Number

If the system shows a single “quantity on hand” or “available” number without any breakdown of reserved/committed/available, it’s probably doing immediate or ship-time deduction. Ask specifically: “Where can I see how much inventory is reserved for pending orders?”

No Clear Definition of When Deduction Occurs

If vendor documentation doesn’t explicitly state when inventory is deducted, or if the answer is vague (“when the order is processed”), that’s a red flag. They should be able to tell you exactly which action triggers the permanent inventory adjustment.

Can’t Reverse Commits

If there’s no way to uncommit inventory (or if it requires database-level intervention), the system lacks basic accountability mechanisms. You need the ability to correct mistakes.

No Commit Audit Trail

If you can’t generate a report showing all inventory commits in a date range, you can’t reconcile inventory changes to orders. This makes financial reconciliation and stocktake verification nearly impossible.

Automatic Commit with No Configuration

If the system automatically commits inventory at order creation or shipment with no way to configure when or how this happens, you have no control over the most critical step in order processing.

Questions to Ask Vendors

When demoing systems, ask:

1. “Can you show me the difference between reserved and committed inventory?”
2. “What action causes inventory to be permanently deducted?”
3. “Can I configure when that deduction happens?”
4. “Show me the audit trail for an inventory commit.”
5. “How do I uncommit an order if I need to correct a mistake?”
6. “Can I commit multiple orders at once?”
7. “What happens to reserved inventory if an order is cancelled?”

If they can’t answer these questions clearly, or if they seem confused by the questions, the system probably doesn’t have proper commit handling.

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The Path Forward

For businesses currently struggling with inventory accuracy, implementing proper commit handling is one of the highest-leverage improvements you can make.

If You’re Using Immediate Deduction

Symptoms: Inventory counts never match physical stocktakes, cancellations require manual adjustments, customer service can’t confidently quote availability.

Short-term fix: Create a daily report that calculates “real available” by adding back pending order quantities. This is a bandaid, but it gives you visibility while you plan a better solution.

Long-term solution: Move to a two-phase system. This might require changing software, but the operational improvement is worth it. Prioritise systems that explicitly support reservation and commit as separate actions.

If You’re Using Ship-Time Deduction

Symptoms: Overselling during promotions, warehouse picks orders for stock that’s already allocated elsewhere, purchasing under-orders because the system overstates available inventory.

Short-term fix: Implement manual stock holds for high-volume periods (mark inventory as “reserved for flash sale” before the sale starts). Create alerts when available inventory falls below a threshold.

Long-term solution: Same as above—move to a system with proper reservation support. The risk of overselling is too high to tolerate indefinitely.

If You’re Building Custom or Considering Custom Development

Implementing two-phase commit isn’t technically complex, but it requires careful schema design. Your inventory table needs to track:

• Total on hand
• Reserved (and which orders the reservations relate to)
• Committed (historical transactions, not just current balance)

Your order workflow needs explicit states:

• Draft (no reservation)
• Finalised (reservation active)
• Committed (inventory deducted)
• Shipped (physical goods departed)

And you need clear business rules:

• When does reservation happen automatically?
• When does commit happen automatically?
• What conditions require manual commit?
• Who can uncommit, and what approval is required?

Don’t underestimate the workflow design work. The technical implementation is straightforward once you’ve answered the business logic questions.

Change Management

Moving from immediate or ship-time deduction to two-phase commit requires staff training. The concepts aren’t difficult, but they’re probably unfamiliar.

Key messages for training:

• For warehouse staff: Reserved stock is “spoken for” but still physically here. Committed stock has been deducted from inventory counts.
• For customer service: ATP (available to promise) is what you can confidently quote to customers. Total on hand is not the same as available.
• For purchasing: ATP tells you what you can sell; total on hand tells you what’s in the warehouse. Order replacement stock based on ATP forecasts, not total inventory.
• For finance: Commit is the moment inventory value changes. This is the transaction that affects your balance sheet.

Plan for a transition period where you run parallel processes (old and new) until everyone is comfortable with the new workflow.

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Conclusion

The moment inventory is committed—permanently deducted from available stock—is one of the most critical steps in order processing. It affects inventory accuracy, customer satisfaction, warehouse efficiency, and financial reporting.

Yet most order management systems treat it as an afterthought, automatically deducting inventory at order creation or shipment without giving businesses control over when or how it happens.

The solution is conceptually simple: separate reservation (earmarking stock for a specific order) from commitment (permanently adjusting inventory levels). This two-phase approach has been standard in manufacturing for decades because it solves the fundamental tension between preventing overselling and maintaining accurate inventory counts.

For Australian SMBs operating on tight margins, implementing proper commit handling can be transformative:

• Inventory accuracy improves (reducing costly stocktake reconciliation)
• Overselling risk drops (improving customer satisfaction)
• Warehouse efficiency increases (staff can trust system availability)
• Financial reporting is cleaner (inventory transactions are auditable)

If you’re evaluating order management systems, make commit handling a priority evaluation criterion. Ask vendors to demonstrate how they handle reservation, commitment, and uncommitment. Look for systems that treat commit as a deliberate, auditable action rather than an automatic side-effect.

And if you’re stuck with a system that gets commit wrong, start planning your migration. The operational cost of poor inventory accuracy compounds over time. The sooner you fix it, the sooner you reclaim the time and money lost to manual reconciliation, stock discrepancies, and unhappy customers.

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EQUOS9 implements two-phase commit through an explicit “Commit” workflow step—a deliberate action that permanently records inventory adjustments after stock has been reserved. Orders move through Finalize (reserve), Commit (deduct), Pick, and Ship stages, giving you full control over when inventory is permanently adjusted. Learn more about our order management module.