This report helps you to pinpoint stock that is being incorrectly represented in inventory systems, so you can resolve the discrepancies to improve planning and fulfillment and ensure your items are in stock. This report helps you track two kinds of inventory discrepancies: phantom Inventory (inventory that a system indicates is available, but does not physically exist in the store/warehouse) and ghost inventory (inventory that physically exists, but is not shown in the system).
Note: This report and its help article are in beta release. For questions or feedback, please contact Crisp support.
Monitoring for phantom and ghost inventory is important, as they can cause the following issues:
Negatively affecting sales, replenishment, and relationships with retailers.
Masking the true cause of sales issues, making it unclear whether there is a demand problem or an inventory problem
Affecting supplier scorecards: It can affect KPIs like on-shelf availability (OSA), instock %, and fill rate and result in inaccurate penalties.
Impacting planning: Everything from demand forecasting to promotional planning can get skewed.
Affecting end shopper experience: Poor inventory accuracy means customers may not be able to find your product, impacting brand perception and loyalty.
Summary page
This page provides a high-level overview of phantom and ghost inventory issues across your product catalog. This is where you can assess the scope and financial impact of these data discrepancies.
Overview tiles
These visualizations appear at the top of the page and provide key performance indicators (KPIs) for this year to help you get a quick snapshot of your phantom and ghost inventory issues.
- Product Phantom Count: The number of unique products with at least one phantom inventory issue.
- Product Affected Rate Phantom: The percent of all products that have at least one phantom inventory issue.
- POD Phantom Count: The number of product-store combinations (PODs) with phantom inventory.
- POD Affected Rate Phantom: The percent of all PODs that have phantom inventory.
- Product Ghost Count: The number of unique products with at least one ghost inventory issue.
- Product Affected Rate Ghost: The percent of all products that have at least one ghost inventory issue.
- POD Ghost Count: The number of product–store combinations (PODs) with ghost inventory.
- POD Affected Rate Ghost: The percent of all PODs that have ghost inventory.
- Store Phantom Count: The number of stores with at least one phantom inventory issue.
- EOH $ Phantom: The dollar value of on-hand inventory tied to phantom inventory.
- Store Ghost Count: This number of unique store that have ghost inventory.
- Lost Sales $ Ghost: The amount of sales dollars lost due to ghost inventory.
- Lost Sales Units (Ghost): The number of sales units lost due to ghost inventory.
Other visualizations
- Ghost inventory by class (table): This table breaks down lost sales due to ghost inventory by product class to help you understand what might be driving the inventory issues.
- Phantom inventory by product (table): This table provides phantom inventory metrics by product to help you home in on specific products that are having phantom inventory issues.
- EOH $ Phantom and Lost Sales $ Ghost (chart): This chart helps you understand how the value of missing product and the financial impact of lost sales are trending over time.
Detail page
This page provides a more detailed view of phantom and ghost inventory by DPCI, so you can investigate product-level issues more deeply
Visualizations
- Phantom and ghost inventory by product (table): This table provides weekly phantom/ghost inventory totals to allow you to conduct root cause analysis and identify specific timeframes for follow-up with your retail partners.