Stock Counts: Inventory Reconciliation

The Problem

Sortly's customers were using the platform to track inventory, but had no way to verify that their digital records matched physical reality. Businesses conducting periodic inventory counts were forced to use spreadsheets and manual processes alongside Sortly, creating data silos and workflow friction.

Through JTBD research, I discovered that the core job wasn't "count my inventory," it was "confirm my inventory is accurate." This reframing shifted the entire product direction from a simple counting tool to a full reconciliation capability.

My Approach

I applied Jobs-to-Be-Done research methodology to deeply understand how businesses were conducting inventory counts. This involved exploratory customer interviews with open-ended, problem-focused questioning, validating pain points and opportunity size before solutioning.

The discovery phase revealed that customers were already doing reconciliation, just poorly, with manual workarounds. This gave us confidence in the opportunity size and shaped the solution toward a system-vs-physical comparison workflow rather than a standalone counting feature.

The Solution

We shipped Sortly's first physical-vs-system reconciliation capability, Stock Counts. Users could initiate a count, scan or manually enter physical quantities, and the system would automatically flag discrepancies between expected and actual inventory levels.

The feature integrated directly into existing Sortly workflows, so businesses didn't need to change how they organized their inventory. We designed it to handle both full warehouse counts and targeted spot checks.

Results

Stock Counts became one of Sortly's most-requested features and a key differentiator in the Enterprise sales process. The feature drove $750K+ in new capability ARR and contributed to a 12-point NPS improvement by solving a long-standing customer pain point.

Key Learnings

JTBD reframing changes everything. If we had built a "counting tool," we would have shipped something generic and underwhelming. By reframing the job as "verify accuracy," we built a reconciliation system that matched how businesses actually think about inventory integrity.

The discovery process also taught me the value of watching customers use workarounds. Their manual processes revealed the exact workflow we needed to digitize. We just had to pay attention.