The audit isn’t about how good your forecasting is. It’s about whether the people who buy from you repeatedly are protected when the catalog moves under them: when something sells out, goes away, changes, or gets cut.

Open your inventory or stock report, your email and SMS platform, your product page for something that’s sold out, and whatever record you have of the last product you retired. Score each check 0 to 2: 0 if it failed or nobody can answer it, 1 if partly true, 2 if clean. “We’d know if it were a problem” doesn’t count as an answer.

If nobody measured what the last discontinuation did to its buyers, the answer isn’t “nothing.” It’s “unknown.”

The twelve checks

1. Someone sees stock for repeat products daily · 3 minLook at: Who gets told, and how fast, when a top reorder product drops below a few weeks of cover.
   Good: A named person gets an alert with weeks of cover for your top reorder products, and the retention lead gets the same alert.
   Cost if wrong: The first person to notice a stockout is a customer.
   Read next: Who a Stockout Hits
2. Stockout risk is ranked by repeat customers · 4 minLook at: How your team decides which products to reorder first, expedite or protect.
   Good: The ranking uses each product’s share of repeat customers, not units or revenue alone.
   Cost if wrong: You protect the product new customers try and let the one loyal customers reorder run out.
   Read next: Who a Stockout Hits
3. You know what your last stockout cost · 4 minLook at: Your biggest stockout of the past year.
   Good: Someone compared the reorder rate of customers who hit it with similar customers who didn’t, over the following months.
   Cost if wrong: You count the lost week of sales and miss the lost customers, so you underinvest in stock.
   Read next: What a Stockout Costs
4. Every sold-out product captures intent · 3 minLook at: A sold-out product page, on a phone.
   Good: A back-in-stock signup by email or text, an honest expected date if you have one, and a flow that fires on restock.
   Cost if wrong: A shopper who wanted to buy leaves with nothing to bring them back.
   Read next: Back in Stock, or Something Close
5. Sold out offers something close · 3 minLook at: The same page, and what happens to a subscription order when its product is out.
   Good: The page names one or two real alternatives, and subscribers are asked before anything is swapped.
   Cost if wrong: The customer finds the alternative at a competitor, or gets a swap they didn’t agree to.
   Read next: Back in Stock, or Something Close
6. Late orders get an honest notice, not a discount · 3 minLook at: What a customer hears when a paid order can’t ship on time.
   Good: A notice with a revised date and a one-click cancel and refund, sent before the promised date passes.
   Cost if wrong: You break the FTC’s mail order rule, and a discount to wait may cost you future orders too.
   Read next: Back in Stock, or Something Close
7. Customer demand signals feed the buy plan · 4 minLook at: What goes into the next purchase order for your top products.
   Good: Scheduled subscription orders, predicted reorders and waitlist counts are inputs, not just last month’s sales.
   Cost if wrong: You hold more safety stock than you need and still run out of what’s already been promised.
   Read next: Information for Inventory
8. Overstock is cleared without teaching everyone to wait · 3 minLook at: How the last excess inventory was cleared.
   Good: Targeted offers, bundles or private sales to people who already buy the product, not a sitewide markdown.
   Cost if wrong: Full-price customers learn the price is optional.
   Read next: The Markdown Trap
9. You can list a product’s dependents in an hour · 3 minLook at: Whether anyone can pull, today, the customers who have bought a given product repeatedly or for whom it’s most of their spend.
   Good: A saved query or segment does it for any product.
   Cost if wrong: Every change reaches your most exposed customers by surprise.
   Read next: Find the Dependents
10. Retirements follow a written playbook · 4 minLook at: The last product you discontinued.
    Good: Its dependents got notice, a last chance to stock up and a named replacement, and someone measured how many were still ordering 90 days later.
    Cost if wrong: The product’s heaviest buyers find out from a sold-out page.
    Read next: The Discontinuation Playbook
11. Reformulations are announced before they ship · 3 minLook at: Your last formula, supplier, scent, fit or packaging change on a reorder product.
    Good: Existing buyers heard about it before it arrived, with a way to try it, and the reorder rate was watched.
    Cost if wrong: The customer discovers the change in the product, which reads as a broken promise.
    Read next: Reformulation, and New Coke
12. Cuts are scored on basket role, not margin alone · 4 minLook at: The spreadsheet from the last range review.
    Good: Each product under review shows its repeat buyers, what else is in its orders, and how many customers depend on it.
    Cost if wrong: You cut a low-margin anchor and lose the orders it brought with it.
    Read next: Prune by Basket Role

Score as you go; your band appears when all twelve are in.

Read your score

If you’ve never retired or reformulated a product, score checks 10 and 11 as 1; they’ll matter the first time you do. Check 9 applies to every brand, and it’s the one to fix before it’s needed.