Black Friday is on 27 November this year and Cyber Monday is on the 30th. For a lot of small WooCommerce shops, that’s four days of more orders than the rest of the month put together.
When it’s over, the website will show a stock number for every product. Some of those numbers will be wrong.
Not because WooCommerce got it wrong. It takes stock off when an order comes in, just as it should. The trouble is everything that happens around the orders during a busy weekend. And the week straight after Cyber Monday is when Christmas orders really start, so a wrong number then costs you the most.
So my suggestion for this year is simple: plan a short recount for the days straight after Cyber Monday, and plan it now, while you’ve still got time to think.
How a sale weekend moves your numbers
On a normal week, stock drifts slowly. Over a sale weekend, all the usual causes happen at once:
- The wrong variation gets picked. Someone packing in a hurry sends a medium instead of a large. WooCommerce took a large off, the shelf lost a medium, so both numbers are now out by one.
- Exchanges get done by hand. A customer wants a different size, someone swaps it over email and posts it, and the stock never gets changed.
- Refunds and returns don’t match. WooCommerce gives you the option to restock refunded items when you refund an order. If that’s ticked for something that never came back, the website gains stock you haven’t got. If a return goes back on the shelf without it, the website is short.
- Damage and samples. The jumper that got snagged, the mug that broke in packing, the one you gave a customer as an apology. They leave the shelf but not WooCommerce.
- Quick edits made in a hurry. Someone tops up a number in wp-admin at 11pm to “keep it selling” and nobody remembers why on Tuesday.
None of these is a disaster on its own. Together, over four busy days, they add up. You only find out when a Christmas order comes in for something that isn’t there.
Plan the recount now, not on the day
Right now you’ve got time to think. On 1 December you won’t. So I’d do the planning this week:
Book the slot. Pick a morning in the first few days of December, once the weekend’s orders are packed and sent. Put it in the diary like any other job. If it’s “when things calm down”, it won’t happen, because things don’t calm down until January.
Write the recount list. You’re not recounting the whole shop. I’d include:
- everything that was in your Black Friday sale, especially if you counted it beforehand as I suggested in Count It Before You Discount It
- anything that sold out or came close
- anything that had a return, refund, exchange or cancellation over the weekend
- the products in your gift guide and Christmas promotions, which I covered in Count Before You Promise
That’s often a short list. It’s the stock Christmas customers are most likely to order, and the stock most likely to be wrong.
Decide who counts. If you’ve got seasonal help, set them up now, not on the morning. In Inventory Check, add them as a WordPress user with the Inventory Check Counter role. They can search, scan and save counts on their phone, but they can’t update WooCommerce stock. That stays with you. I explained the roles in Counter on the Floor, Supervisor at the Desk.
Finish any open check first. Each user can only have one open stock check at a time. If you’ve got a pre-Christmas count paused somewhere, finish it or review it before the sale, so the recount can start cleanly.
Pack first, then count
This is the one bit of timing I’d be strict about.
WooCommerce takes stock off when the order comes in, not when the parcel leaves. So if Monday’s orders are still sitting on the shelf waiting to be packed, the shelf will show more than the website. That’s not a real difference. It’s just orders that haven’t gone yet.
Get the weekend’s backlog packed and sent first, or at least picked and moved out of the way. Then count what’s left.
Running the recount
Start a new stock check in Inventory Check and give it a name you’ll recognise later, like “Post-Black Friday recount 2026”. Then on your phone, open /inventory-check/ on your own site, search for each product by name or SKU or tap Scan to use the camera on its barcode, and enter what’s actually there.
A few things that help on a day like this:
- Count each variation. After a sale, the parent product total hides the problem. It’s the large in navy that’s out, not “the jumper”.
- You can see what you’ve done. Products already counted in this check show as Checked, so nothing gets counted twice.
- Patchy signal is fine. If the connection drops in the stockroom, keep counting. The counts sync when you’re back online.
- The shop can stay open. Saving a count doesn’t change your live stock. Nothing changes in WooCommerce until someone with the right role reviews the differences and taps Update stock.
Christmas orders will still be coming in while you count. If an order, refund or manual edit changes a product’s stock after you’ve counted it, Inventory Check flags that line as a conflict rather than overwriting the newer figure. Recount it and review again. I wrote about why in Just Overwrite the Stock.
Reading the differences after a sale
When you tap Review differences, you’ll see what WooCommerce expected, what you counted, and the gap. After a sale, the pattern of the gaps often tells you what happened:
- One size is short and the size next to it is over. That’s almost always a wrong pick. Fix both numbers, and check the orders in case a customer has the wrong size and hasn’t told you yet.
- The shelf has fewer than the website. Update the stock so WooCommerce stops selling what you haven’t got. If it’s a product you’ll want for Christmas, reorder now while suppliers can still deliver.
- The shelf has more than the website. Before you update, check it’s not an unpacked order or a return still waiting to be checked. If it really is spare stock, that’s good news going into December.
- The same product is wrong again. If it was out before the sale and it’s out again now, that’s a process problem, not a counting one. Returns and refunds are the usual cause.
While you’re on each product, check that Manage stock is ticked and that Allow backorders is set to “Do not allow”, unless you know you can get more in quickly. Once the number is right, that’s what stops WooCommerce selling past zero.
Keep the record
When the recount is done, Inventory Check → History in wp-admin keeps a record of the check and what changed, with a Download CSV button. If you counted your sale list before Black Friday, keep both files side by side. Next year you’ll know which products drifted most over the weekend and where to look first.
Wrap Up
Black Friday doesn’t just sell stock. It moves your numbers around in ways WooCommerce can’t see: wrong picks, hand-done exchanges, refunds that don’t match returns, and the odd breakage. The days straight after Cyber Monday are your last quiet-ish chance to put that right before the Christmas orders arrive.
So plan it this week. Book a morning in early December, write a short recount list, set up anyone who’s helping, pack the backlog first, then count, review and update.
Inventory Check for WooCommerce is fully free. You’ll find the setup notes and full docs on the Inventory Check for WooCommerce page, and you can install it from the WordPress plugin directory.
If you’d like a hand planning your post-Black Friday recount, or your stock numbers keep drifting and you’re not sure why, book a quick call and we’ll look at it together.
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.