Knowledge base
Concepts that shape EOIT
A working glossary of the terms, definitions and ideas behind ecommerce operations. Click any term for the full explanation.
Inventory
- ABC classificationCategorising inventory by revenue contribution — A (top 20%), B (middle), C (long tail).
- Capital tiedTotal monetary value of stock currently sitting in your warehouse.
- Days of stockHow many days your current stock will last at the current sales velocity.
- Dead stockInventory that hasn't sold in a defined period but still occupies space and capital.
- Fast moverA SKU with high sales velocity relative to its category.
- Slow moverA SKU with low sales velocity but still occasional sales.
- Stock-outWhen a SKU's available inventory hits zero. Direct cost: lost sales.
Procurement
- Lead timeTime between placing an order with a supplier and receiving it.
- MOQ — Minimum Order QuantityThe smallest quantity a supplier will accept for an order.
- Pause (phase-out)Temporarily excluding a SKU from procurement workflows.
- Reorder pointThe inventory level at which you should place a new order to avoid stock-outs.
- Safety stockBuffer inventory held above expected demand to absorb supply variability.
- SupplierA vendor from whom you purchase goods.
Warehouse
- Bin locationThe physical location in your warehouse where a specific SKU is stored.
- Custom metafieldAn extension field in Shopify that stores extra data beyond standard product/variant fields.
- PicklistA document or screen telling a warehouse worker which SKUs to collect for outgoing orders.
- SKU — Stock Keeping UnitA unique identifier for a product variant, used internally to track inventory.
- VariantA specific option of a product — e.g., 'blue / 38mm' of a watch strap.
Operations
- All-time dataSales and inventory history kept since the beginning of your shop, never truncated.
- Audit trailA chronological log of every change made in a system.
- FulfillmentThe process of completing an order — picking, packing, shipping.
- Liquid (Shopify)Shopify's templating language used for theme customisation.
- Order line itemA single line within an order representing one variant and quantity.
- Partial fulfillmentWhen some items in an order have shipped but others haven't.
- RefundA return of money to the customer, optionally with goods returning to inventory.
- Sales velocityThe rate at which a SKU sells, expressed as units per day.
- Time-window filteringViewing metrics over a chosen period — last 7 days, last 90 days, last year, all-time.
- WebhookA real-time notification mechanism where one system pushes data to another when an event happens.
Privacy & data
- Data minimisationA privacy principle requiring you to collect only the data strictly necessary for your purpose.
- GDPRThe EU's privacy law, requiring data minimisation, transparency and breach notification.
- PII — Personally Identifiable InformationAny data that can identify a specific individual: name, email, phone, IP address.
- Read-only accessA permissions model where a tool can read data but not modify it.