Real Time WMS Inventory: How to Stop Managing Fulfillment With Delayed Data

Real time WMS inventory sounds like a technical upgrade until you realize it is a business requirement. If your warehouse management system is not updating inventory as work happens, your team is running the company on delayed data. Delayed data causes oversells, missed cutoffs, emergency cycle counts, and customer service apologies that never should have been needed. Real time inventory is not about prettier dashboards. It is about keeping the system aligned with reality minute by minute.

Brands often discover the need for real time WMS inventory during growth. Volume rises, order velocity increases, and the gap between what the system says and what the warehouse is doing becomes costly. In calm weeks, a laggy system might limp along. In peak season or during a retailer fire drill, lag becomes chaos. The point of real time is simple: your storefront, your planning tools, and your customer team should not be working from yesterday's version of the truth.

Why most WMS platforms fall behind reality

Many WMS platforms were built to record inventory at a few major checkpoints. Receiving happens. Putaway happens. Picking happens. Shipping happens. In between those steps, inventory often moves through a gray zone where it exists physically but is not yet visible digitally. That is where trouble starts.

Bryan Wright, CTO and COO of G10 Fulfillment, explained the core standard for a system that stays accurate: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." Real time WMS inventory depends on that level of transaction capture. Every touch is a moment where inventory can change location, status, or allocation. If the system misses those touches, it falls behind reality.

In a weaker setup, inventory becomes visible only when it hits a final bin, or when a batch update runs. That delay may be minutes or hours, but in modern e-commerce it can be enough to cause oversells, because the store is selling against a number that is no longer true.

What real time looks like inside the warehouse

Real time WMS inventory means the system knows where product is even while it is moving. It is not limited to final storage locations. It tracks receiving docks, staging areas, pallets, and even the equipment moving product through the building.

Bryan described what that level of tracking looks like on the floor: "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." That is not trivia. That is operational control. When you can locate product instantly, you ship faster, you reduce exceptions, and you stop wasting labor hunting for inventory that is technically on hand but practically lost.

Real time tracking also supports better decisions. If a customer asks where an order is, the WMS can show its status through pick, pack, and ship. If a retailer drops a rush PO, you can verify inventory availability based on what is actually accessible, not what the system thinks exists in some abstract sense.

Scan-based execution is the engine of real time inventory

You cannot get real time WMS inventory without scan discipline. If people move inventory without scanning it, the system cannot update in real time, because it does not know anything happened. The technology is only as real time as the behavior feeding it.

Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment at G10 Fulfillment, stated the baseline in plain language: "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 inventory drift. Drift is what causes the system to fall behind reality.

Scan-based execution also creates an audit trail. If an order was shorted, you can trace where the breakdown occurred. If a SKU count is off, you can review the transaction history to identify where the variance likely started. Without scans, the system is guessing, and your team ends up recounting and patching instead of improving.

Why real time inventory reduces oversells across channels

Oversells are usually treated like an ecommerce platform problem, but they are more often a warehouse truth problem. If your WMS is delayed, your store is selling against a number that is not current. That mismatch becomes more dangerous as you expand channels.

Jen Myers, Chief Marketing Officer at G10 Fulfillment, described the need brands face when they sell through multiple channels: "You want to make sure your inventory is tracked across those two different systems, to make sure that there's enough inventory." That starts with the warehouse. If the WMS inventory is not real time, omnichannel allocation becomes guesswork.

Real time WMS inventory helps keep availability aligned because inventory decrements quickly when orders are picked and packed, and inventory increments quickly when receipts are processed. It also helps when inventory is being transferred between locations, because the system can update status and location as the move occurs.

Ship accuracy is a real time outcome, not a slogan

Real time inventory is not only about knowing what you have. It is also about shipping the right things consistently. When inventory is accurate in real time, pickers are less likely to chase the wrong locations, and packers are less likely to ship substitutions or partials without realizing it.

Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10 Fulfillment, described the performance level that strong execution can achieve: "We have over 99.9% ship accuracy of these orders." Real time WMS inventory contributes to outcomes like that by reducing exceptions, supporting verification, and keeping the system aligned with what the floor is doing.

Customer visibility turns real time inventory into a business advantage

When customers cannot see what is happening, they create tickets. Tickets interrupt work, and interruptions increase errors. Customer-facing visibility is one of the most underrated benefits of real time WMS inventory, because it reduces noise and keeps the warehouse focused.

Maureen Milligan, Director of Operations and Projects at G10 Fulfillment, described what real time access gives customers: "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility." She also described the practical impact: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." When customers can self-serve status and inventory information, they stop guessing, and the warehouse stays in rhythm.

How to evaluate whether a WMS is truly real time

Some providers will say their WMS is real time because they can show you a dashboard. The more important question is whether the system captures inventory at every touchpoint, including internal moves, replenishment, and staging. A system that updates only at a few checkpoints is not real time, even if the screen updates quickly.

A useful test is to ask for transaction history detail. Can the provider show when inventory hit the dock, when it was moved, when it was stowed, and when it was picked. Bryan described that level of traceability directly: "We have portals that show you the data. We have history that shows you all of that tracking." If a provider can show that history, they are far more likely to be operating with real time inventory truth.

How G10 approaches real time WMS inventory

G10 focuses on scan-based execution and transaction-level tracking so inventory stays visible while it moves. Connor summarized the baseline: "Having a 3PL and WMS that is 100% scan-based is crucial." Bryan described the tracking foundation that supports real time: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." Maureen connected real time data to customer confidence: "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility."

If you are tired of managing fulfillment with delayed data, real time WMS inventory is the standard to insist on. When inventory updates as work happens, you can sell confidently, ship consistently, expand channels with fewer surprises, and stop wasting time reconciling numbers that never should have drifted in the first place.