Every December I hear some version of the same story. A gift that sold well all autumn shows 6 in stock on the website. A customer orders it at 9pm on the 18th. Someone goes to the shelf the next morning and there are none. Now there’s an apology email, a refund, and a customer who has to find a present somewhere else with a week to go.
The stock didn’t vanish in December. The number had been wrong since about September. Nobody found out until it mattered.
That’s why I think the most useful stocktake of the year is the one you do in October or early November, before Black Friday and the Christmas rush. Not because it’s tidy, but because it’s the last point where a wrong number is cheap to fix.
Why October, not January
Plenty of shops count in January because that’s when things go quiet. That’s a fine time for the accounts. But a January count tells you what went wrong over Christmas. An October count stops it happening.
If you count now, you get three things:
- Real numbers going into your busiest weeks. When a product says 4, there are 4.
- Time to reorder. If a best seller is actually down to two, you find out while suppliers can still deliver before Christmas.
- Fewer awkward emails. Overselling a sold-out gift in December costs you the sale, the refund, and often the customer.
You don’t have to count everything
A pre-Christmas count is not the full year-end stocktake. You’re not trying to account for every spare part in the back room. You’re trying to make sure the products people will buy in the next ten weeks have the right figures.
So before anyone picks up a phone, make a short list:
- Last year’s November and December best sellers. Your WooCommerce reports will show you these.
- Anything you’re promoting for Black Friday. If it’s in the email, it needs to be right.
- Gift lines and seasonal stock that only sells at this time of year.
- Products you already have a bad feeling about. Every shop has a few.
That might be 40 products, not 400. It’s a couple of evenings, not a lost weekend.
Spread it over a few evenings
Shops are already busy in October, so I suggest splitting the count by area: one shelf or bay at a time, a night at a time.
Inventory Check lets you pause an open stock check and pick it up later without losing the counts you’ve already saved. Count the gift shelf on Tuesday, pause, and carry on with the stockroom on Thursday. Everything you’ve saved is still there.
Give the check a name that tells you what it was, like “Pre-Christmas count 2026”. In January you’ll be glad you did.
Counting while orders are still coming in
The tricky thing about counting in autumn is that the shop is open. Orders keep arriving while you’re standing at the shelf.
This is where it helps that saving a count doesn’t touch your live stock. Counts are stored against the stock check until someone with the right role reviews them and taps Update stock. And if an order comes in for a product you’ve already counted, Inventory Check flags that line as a conflict instead of overwriting it, so you can recount it rather than undo a sale. I wrote about that in more detail in Just Overwrite the Stock.
My advice: count quiet categories during the day, and leave your fastest sellers for after closing or early morning, when orders are slowest.
Get the extra pair of hands to count, not update
If you’ve got seasonal help, or a family member roped in for the evening, give them the Inventory Check Counter role. They can search, scan and save counts on their phone, but they never see Update stock. You review the differences and make the final call. Counter on the Floor, Supervisor at the Desk explains how that works.
What to do with the differences
When you review, don’t just write the new numbers and move on. Each difference tells you something:
- A best seller is lower than you thought. Reorder now, while there’s still time to get it in.
- Something is higher than expected. That’s stock you didn’t know you could sell. It’s a good candidate for a Black Friday offer.
- The same product is wrong again. That’s usually a process problem, like returns going back on the shelf without being added back in WooCommerce. Fix that before December, not after.
Keep the record
When the check is done, Inventory Check → History in wp-admin keeps a record of what was counted and what changed, with a Download CSV button. Keep that file. When you do your January count, you’ve got something to compare it with.
If you’ve never done a stocktake in WooCommerce
If this would be your first count, don’t start with 40 products. Start with one shelf. I walked through that step by step in Your First WooCommerce Stocktake in 20 Minutes. Do that this week, then plan the pre-Christmas count.
Wrap Up
Your December stock problems are mostly October stock problems that nobody spotted. Make a short list of the products that matter for Christmas, count them over a few evenings, review the differences, and reorder while you still can.
Inventory Check for WooCommerce is fully free. Install it from the WordPress.org plugin directory, and find the docs and setup notes on the Inventory Check for WooCommerce page.
Written by Connie, an AI, from Neil Matthews’ notes, archive, and direction. Neil directed and edited this piece. He did not write these words. Augmented publishing by Neil Matthews.