For decades, just-in-time (JIT) inventory has been the domain of large enterprises with massive IT budgets, custom-built systems, and dedicated ERP teams. Mid-market retailers and manufacturers accepted that achieving JIT-level precision required 18-24 month implementations, enterprise-grade resources, and perfectly coordinated supplier networks.
But why should it be like this? Scalable Inventory Management solutions don’t have to be reserved for large companies. At Tailor, we’re changing this dynamic.
Our composable, API-first ERP platform makes JIT inventory management achievable for scaling brands in weeks, not years — through unified real-time data, event-driven automation, and modular implementation that doesn't disrupt your existing operations.
JIT inventory management requires split-second coordination across sales channels, warehouses, suppliers, and financial systems. When inventory moves — from a sale on Shopify, a warehouse receiving, or a transfer between locations — every connected system needs to update instantly. Otherwise, you’re primed to lose momentum.
Reorder points need to trigger automatically. Allocation rules need to execute in real-time. Cost data needs to flow immediately to accounting.
Most scaling companies lack this capability because their systems are fundamentally disconnected. Shopify doesn't talk to QuickBooks in real-time, Amazon inventory is tracked separately, warehouse data lives in spreadsheets, and financial visibility lags weeks or longer.
This creates the core barrier to just-in-time inventory management: data lag. When it takes 12-48 hours for inventory updates to sync across channels, or weeks for COGS to appear in your accounting system, you can't make JIT-level decisions. You compensate with safety stock, buffer inventory, and manual reconciliation — the exact opposite of JIT principles.
Tailor eliminates this lag through three architectural components:
Headless inventory backbone that serves as a single source of truth
API-first real-time synchronization across all systems
Event-driven automation that executes replenishment and allocation decisions instantly
The foundation of just-in-time inventory management with Tailor is a unified inventory system-of-record. This means we create a single source of truth that sits between your customer-facing channels and your back-office systems.
Tailor integrates with a number of core sales channels, including:
Shopify
Amazon
Etsy
TikTok
Shop
POS systems
It also integrates with popular B2B platforms and back-office systems such as:
QuickBooks
Xero
Sage
NetSuite
Numerous 3PLs
Warehouse systems
These integrations work together to create centralized inventory data accessible via a customized UI and GraphQL API. No worries if you use a handful, many, or all of these systems in your business. Tailor is designed to be built from the ground up to meet your specific needs.
Tailor’s headless architecture separates front-end customer experience from back-end inventory operations, which means you keep the tools your customers interact with while gaining unified operational control. This also helps you integrate new tools as you scale.
Additionally, Multi-location inventory tracking is built into Tailor's core architecture.
You can track inventory across warehouses, stores, 3PLs, and in-transit locations — all synchronized in real-time. When inventory moves from one location to another, Tailor updates available-to-sell quantities across all channels instantly, adjusting allocation rules and reorder point calculations automatically.
This is the foundational capability that makes just-in-time inventory management possible. Work with unified, real-time visibility and ditch the disconnected, lagged data.
Tailor's API-first architecture ensures inventory levels, allocations, and costs update in real-time across all connected systems through event-driven updates via webhooks.
**Here's how it works: **
When a sale happens on Shopify, Tailor's inventory management system instantly updates through the API. QuickBooks receives the COGS entry in real-time. Amazon's available-to-sell quantity adjusts automatically. The reorder point check triggers immediately.
If inventory hits the threshold, Tailor generates a purchase order based on supplier lead time and demand forecast. This happens without manual intervention, which smooths out your workflow from the start.
The technical foundation is bi-directional API integration: data flows both ways between Tailor and connected systems. When you update inventory, the change propagates to Shopify, Amazon, your 3PL, and your accounting system. When inventory moves in your warehouse management system, Tailor receives the update and recalculates available-to-sell, reserved, and allocated quantities across all channels.
This real-time synchronization enables the core requirement of just-in-time inventory management: making decisions based on current reality, not yesterday's data.
Tailor's omnichannel order management system is purpose-built for meeting your inventory management across multiple sales channels. It routes orders to optimal fulfillment locations based on real-time inventory availability, integrates with shipping carriers and 3PLs for direct fulfillment execution, and handles channel-aware allocation while preventing stockouts across your sales mix.
When you're running JIT-level inventory, you can't afford to manually check which warehouse has stock before fulfilling an order.
Tailor's order management system makes this decision automatically in milliseconds, considering inventory availability, shipping zones, carrier rates, and your business rules. The order routes to the right location, picks up the shipping label, and transmits to your 3PL or warehouse management system.
Tailor's inventory management system provides a stable operational foundation for:
Multi-location tracking across warehouses, stores, 3PLs, and in-transit inventory
Lot and serial number management for traceability and compliance
Automated replenishment based on demand forecasting, reorder points, and supplier lead times
Cycle counting and inventory adjustment workflows that maintain accuracy
Its critical capability is lot tracking for landed cost accuracy. When you receive inventory, Tailor captures the product cost, freight, duty, handling charges, and other landed cost components. This lot-level costing enables true JIT financial visibility:
You know the exact cost of goods sold at the moment of fulfillment, not 30 days later, after tallying up and double-checking manual spreadsheet entries.
One of the hidden barriers to just-in-time inventory management is financial visibility lag. Most companies calculate COGS weeks after transactions through manual entries in their accounting system. When you're running minimal inventory levels, you need to know profitability in real-time to make smart replenishment decisions.
Tailor's ledger-based costing ties COGS directly to operational events.
When you receive inventory, Tailor creates the inventory asset entry. When you fulfill an order, Tailor generates the COGS entry at that moment, using lot-level landed cost data. When you process a return, the inventory adjustment and COGS reversal happen simultaneously.
This real-time cost accounting syncs automatically with QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, or NetSuite; no manual entries required. You have margin visibility by SKU, channel, and customer segment in real-time. This enables margin-aware inventory decisions: you know which products to reorder aggressively and which to phase out because the landed cost eroded profitability.
Just-in-time inventory management requires tight coordination with suppliers. Tailor's procurement automation:
Generates purchase orders based on reorder points, lead times, and demand forecasts
Tracks supplier lead time performance and updates reorder point calculations
Handles receiving workflows that automatically update inventory and trigger COGS entries
Just-in-time inventory management requires real-time coordination across dozens of systems. Traditional ERP implementations require 18-24 months, partly because of custom integration projects for every third-party system.
Tailor’s 80+ native integrations mean you implement JIT inventory management in weeks instead of months. No custom integration projects required for your standard tech stack. You can connect Shopify in an afternoon, sync QuickBooks the same day, and add your 3PL via EDI within a week, all without disrupting your workflows.
The integrations are pre-built, tested, and maintained by Tailor, so you don’t have to hire agencies or developers to build and maintain custom connectors.
This implementation speed is what makes just-in-time inventory management accessible to mid-market companies. You're not committing to an 18-month project with uncertain ROI. You're implementing the inventory management module in 4-6 weeks, proving JIT-level precision with measurable stockout reduction and inventory turn improvement, then deciding whether to expand to procurement automation and cost accounting modules.
Explore Tailor's API documentation to see how our GraphQL API enables custom integrations and automation workflows for just-in-time inventory management. The docs show you exactly what's possible: full CRUD access to all inventory data, event webhooks for real-time automation, integration patterns for common scenarios, and more.
When you’re ready to achieve just-in-time inventory management without 18-month ERP implementations and enterprise-level budgets, we’ll work with you to assess your current tech stack, identify integration points, and define a testable pilot that will meet your biggest pain points.
Start with a 30-45 minute scoping call to identify whether inventory management is your highest-pain module and define a 4-6 week pilot to prove JIT-level precision.
