Real Time Inventory Dashboard: What to Watch So You Stop Flying Blind

A real time inventory dashboard is supposed to make you feel in control. Too often, it does the opposite. It shows a pile of numbers that look precise, but do not help you answer the only questions that matter: what is actually available, where is it, what is changing right now, and what is about to break. If your dashboard cannot answer those questions, it is decoration, not management.

Brands usually start caring about dashboards when volume rises. Orders move faster, inbound arrives more often, and small issues turn into big outages. The right dashboard does not just report inventory. It helps you spot drift, predict stockouts, and avoid oversells before customers find out the hard way.

Why dashboards lie when the warehouse is not truly real time

The dashboard is only as honest as the system feeding it. If the warehouse management system updates inventory in batches, or only at a few checkpoints, the dashboard becomes a delayed version of reality. It can look clean while the floor is messy.

Bryan Wright, CTO and COO of G10 Fulfillment, described the tracking standard that makes real time possible: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." Without that level of transaction capture, a dashboard cannot be real time. It can only be frequently refreshed misinformation.

Dashboards also lie when internal moves are not captured. Inventory that moves from staging to storage, or from reserve to pick faces, changes availability, even if the total on-hand number stays the same. If the system cannot see those moves, the dashboard shows a count that might be true in aggregate and useless in practice.

What a real time inventory dashboard should show first

The most important thing a dashboard can show is availability by status, not just total on hand. In a warehouse, inventory can be on hand and still not be sellable. It might be in receiving, in staging, in quarantine, or allocated to a retailer PO. If your dashboard lumps all of that into one number, it will lead you into oversells and missed commitments.

Real time dashboards should also show inventory by location, including temporary locations. When the system tracks inventory while it is moving, location visibility becomes powerful. Bryan gave a vivid example of what that looks like: "At any point in time, I know that Bobby has this product on fork 10 right now, and if I needed to go find that product, I just got to go find Bobby on fork 10." A dashboard that can surface that kind of location detail prevents the classic problem of inventory that exists but cannot be found quickly.

Finally, the dashboard should highlight exceptions, not just totals. The goal is to focus attention where risk is rising: low stock on a hero SKU, a backlog in receiving, repeated variances in a location, or a spike in short picks. A dashboard that hides exceptions behind averages is a dashboard that lets problems grow quietly.

Scan discipline is what keeps dashboard data believable

Real time dashboards depend on real time capture. If people move inventory without scanning, the system cannot update, and the dashboard cannot reflect reality. That is why scan-based execution is the baseline for any dashboard that claims to be real time.

Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment at G10 Fulfillment, described the operational rule that makes real time possible: "You want everything to be scanned in the warehouse, nothing done on paper." Paper creates invisible work. Invisible work creates missing transactions. Missing transactions create dashboards that look correct and behave wrong.

Connor also described what brands experience when accuracy breaks down. They were "losing money by shipping wrong items or wrong quantities of items." Dashboards do not prevent those losses by themselves, but when the underlying data is correct, dashboards can surface the early signals that let you fix issues before they become customer-facing mistakes.

Dashboards should reduce tickets, not create them

One of the best tests of a real time inventory dashboard is whether it reduces ticket volume. If customers and internal teams can self-serve accurate information, they stop asking basic questions. When those questions disappear, the warehouse stays focused on execution, and accuracy improves because the process stays disciplined.

Maureen Milligan, Director of Operations and Projects at G10 Fulfillment, described what real time access provides customers: "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility." She also described what that enables: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." When customers can see order progress and inventory status in real time, they stop guessing, and the warehouse avoids interruptions that cause missed scans and errors.

A dashboard that helps customers self-serve is not only a convenience feature. It is an accuracy feature. Fewer interruptions means fewer shortcuts.

Omnichannel requires dashboards that show allocations and commitments

In omnichannel operations, the worst dashboard mistake is treating inventory as a single pool with no commitments. If inventory is allocated to a retailer PO, it should show as committed. If inventory is held for subscriptions, it should show as reserved. If inventory is in transit between facilities, it should show as unavailable until received.

Jen Myers, Chief Marketing Officer at G10 Fulfillment, described the core omnichannel requirement: "You want to make sure your inventory is tracked across those two different systems, to make sure that there's enough inventory." A real time dashboard supports that by showing what is truly available after commitments, not just what is physically present.

That visibility keeps channels from fighting over the same units, which is one of the fastest ways omnichannel growth turns into chaos.

Ship accuracy and order progression should be visible together

Inventory dashboards often ignore the order flow, which is a mistake. Inventory and orders are linked. If you see a sudden drop in a SKU, you should also see whether a wave of orders is hitting it. If you see inventory building in staging, you should also see whether receiving is backlogged or whether putaway is delayed.

When dashboards connect inventory and order progression, you can act earlier. You can add labor to receiving, prioritize putaway for a hot SKU, or pause a campaign before it oversells. You can also measure performance. Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10 Fulfillment, described an execution benchmark that matters to customers: "We have over 99.9% ship accuracy of these orders." A dashboard that shows ship accuracy alongside inventory status helps you connect process discipline to outcomes.

How G10 approaches real time inventory dashboards

G10 focuses on scan-based execution, transaction-level tracking, and customer-facing visibility so dashboards reflect real warehouse activity, not delayed summaries. Connor summarized the baseline: "Having a 3PL and WMS that is 100% scan-based is crucial." Bryan described the tracking foundation that makes dashboards real time: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." Maureen connected visibility to customer confidence: "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility."

If your current dashboard makes inventory feel more confusing, not less, the fix is usually not another widget. The fix is better transaction capture and better visibility by status, location, and exception. When a dashboard is fed by real time warehouse truth, it stops being a wall of numbers and starts being a tool that helps you sell confidently, ship accurately, and spot problems before customers do.