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Eliminate phantom inventory and win back lost sales
 

Phantom Inventory by invent.ai

Make informed decisions about inventory levels, pricing and promotions with accurate data.

Get super vision into your phantom inventory with the invent.ai inventory solutions
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1-3%

increase in sales

Phantom inventory—inventory that appears on-hand but isn’t actually in-store—is a major cause of out-of-shelf availability issues. It delays automated reordering, leading to stockouts, lost sales and frustrated customers. Common causes include human errors, inaccurate inventory records, replenishment errors, shrink, improper handling of damaged goods, inaccurate inventory audits, misplaced items and checkout mistakes. The bottom line–you miss opportunities for more revenue. Addressing these issues ensures accurate stock visibility, better inventory management and improved customer satisfaction.

Invent.ai detects phantom inventory by calculating the probability that an item is inaccurately recorded as on-hand. Our AI identifies potential phantom inventory by analyzing consecutive days with no sales and assessing inventory movements expected for the same period. Fast-selling items with no recorded transactions have a high phantom probability, while slow-moving or volatile items have a lower likelihood of being miscounted. This proactive approach helps retailers correct inventory discrepancies, prevent stockouts and ensure accurate replenishment within their supply chain.

Phantom inventory disrupts operations, causing out-of-stocks, lost sales and imbalanced inventory. Our AI-powered solution detects inventory discrepancies, improving customer satisfaction, reducing lost sales and increasing profit dollars.

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AI-powered detection

Continuously analyzes sales patterns to identify phantom inventory, ensuring discrepancies are caught early to prevent stockouts and lost sales.

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Real-time monitoring

Provides continuous inventory tracking and proactively flags potential phantom inventory, enabling quick corrective actions before they impact sales and long-term revenue expectations.
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Integration with existing systems​

Seamlessly connects with inventory management and POS systems, allowing for automatic updates and real-time adjustments without disrupting workflows.
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Actionable insights

Delivers clear reporting and automated alerts, allowing store teams to investigate and resolve phantom inventory issues while optimizing replenishment decisions.

​Why invent.ai’s phantom inventory solution?

Invent.ai’s phantom inventory solution prevents stockouts, ensuring customers always find what they need, leading to increased sales and improved customer experience. Our solution offers:
  • Boosted sales
  • Data-driven decisions
  • Automatic detection of potential phantom inventory
  • Improved inventory management
  • Real-time store inventory updates using the Phantom Inventory app

Invent.ai detects phantom inventory by continuously monitoring sales activity at the Store/DFU and Store/SKU levels. It identifies the last recorded sales date and then calculates the probability of selling zero units over consecutive days. This probability fluctuates based on the product’s forecast and volatility, ensuring an accurate assessment of potential phantom inventory.

When phantom inventory is detected, the system automatically adjusts net inventory levels, subtracting the phantom quantity to trigger new orders and prevent stockouts. This proactive approach ensures that missing inventory doesn’t disrupt replenishment cycles.

Invent.ai also employs Phantom Memory, which saves detected phantom stock within the DFU’s underlying SKUs where positive inventory was recorded. This feature allows the system to continue ordering even after the initial phantom push, ensuring inventory flows remain consistent for accurate inventory records. The system continuously tracks sales lifts and on-hand inventory, dynamically adjusting future orders based on real-time data to maintain stock accuracy and availability.

You can rely on accurate data ​to make informed decisions ​about inventory levels, pricing and promotions.​

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The science behind it

So, how does invent.ai reduce phantom inventory occurrences? By automatically detecting lost sales and potential phantom inventory, prioritizing store-items by potential lost revenue, alerting store management to investigate inventory issues and minimizing situations where customers can’t find merchandise–reducing frustration and lost sales.

The system sends alerts when an item has inventory but does not sell well. We calculate the probability of inventory being misleading, and the algorithm runs and sends a daily alert to the stores to take action based on defined priorities. Store staff can quickly correct the inventory using the app.

phantom inventory app
invent_ai phantom dashboard

The phantom inventory dashboard helps to quickly review flagged items, see the automatically updated replenishment and allocation and analyze performance.

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Streamline your phantom inventory the invent.ai way

  • Review/update inventory flagged as phantom
  • Replenishment/Allocations automatically updated
  • Analyze performance/review reports in UI​

This allows users time to:​

  • Review/measure success of inventory accuracy​
  • Review future visibility (inventory, sales)​
  • Review current strategies and competitor info​
  • Improve the system with our Hub Model

Optimize inventory accuracy and capture every sale

Phantom inventory disrupts retail operations, leading to lost sales, inaccurate replenishment and frustrated customers. With invent.ai’s AI-driven detection and real-time monitoring, retailers can identify, correct and prevent phantom inventory occurrences, ensuring that inventory data remains reliable and actionable. By eliminating phantom inventory, businesses can reduce stockouts, improve customer satisfaction and boost overall profitability.

With invent.ai, you gain a proactive, automated approach to inventory management, turning phantom inventory challenges into opportunities for increased sales and better customer experiences.

Increase sales by 1-3%

Ensure inventory accuracy to prevent lost sales opportunities.

Improve customer satisfaction

Keep shelves stocked and customers happy with real-time inventory corrections.

Right SKUs in the right place

Proactively detect phantom inventory and reposition stock where it’s needed most.

More frequent, targeted inventory audits

Achieve a 10% sales increase without adding more inventory by improving audit efficiency.

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“Invent.ai's tailor-fit solution leveraging full capabilities of AI and advanced analytics allowed us to optimize our markdowns and achieve maximum profitability throughout the season.”

Head of Merchandising, Leading Apparel Retailer

Read the case study

Speak with an invent.ai Phantom Inventory expert

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