WAIR For Retail and Prima
Integration Agency & Consultants
Month-end close is often delayed when finance can no longer trust the inventory numbers reaching Prima. As volumes grow, inconsistencies in stock levels between WAIR For Retail and Prima lead to manual reconciliation debt and overselling. This integration ensures that every inventory movement reconciles correctly, providing the financial reporting accuracy required for purchase planning and stock availability. Cogent2 provides the operational control to bridge the gap between warehouse movements and the core financial ledger.
Auditing your inventory and ERP stack
Cogent2 will connect your WAIR For Retail and Prima solutions quickly, supporting your Inventory Management and ERP needs. Our consulting services are invaluable, with our system audit services providing a thorough review of your tech stack. This enables our consultants and your team to take decisive action, ensuring your Inventory Management and ERP systems—across WAIR For Retail and Prima—work efficiently together. The result is a smoothly running tech ecosystem, allowing you to deliver an excellent experience to your customers.
Solution Design
Our design for WAIR For Retail and Prima prioritises inventory valuation integrity by establishing Prima as the item master and WAIR as the source of truth for stock movements. We typically push finalised stock levels from WAIR to Prima to drive financial reporting while balancing real-time inventory updates against batch financial synchronisation. This trade-off ensures that storefronts stay accurate to prevent overselling, while batching inventory transactions for Prima simplifies the audit trail for month-end close. We sequence product identifier mapping first to prevent orphaned records caused by inconsistent SKU formatting. This design ensures that the finance team closes the month based on the Prima ledger while the operations team relies on WAIR for granular warehouse tracking. The operating model reduces reconciliation debt by ensuring every physical movement has a corresponding financial entry.
Mapping SKU identifiers and stock flows
The integration synchronises inventory data from WAIR For Retail into Prima to maintain a unified view of stock-on-hand and valuation. WAIR For Retail acts as the system of record for inventory movements, pushing finalised stock levels and transaction data to Prima for financial accounting and order fulfilment. We implement strict mapping between SKU codes and Prima product IDs to ensure data integrity during the transfer. The flow is monitored to capture and alert on master data mismatches or unmapped items before they impact financial reporting. By ensuring Prima receives precise inventory valuations, we reduce the manual effort required for month-end reconciliation and prevent fulfilment errors caused by stock-level drift.
Standardising secure data exchange at scale
Leveraging IPaaS with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 and above security accreditations, WAIR For Retail and Prima benefit from secure, efficient Inventory Management and ERP integration. IPaaS enables WAIR For Retail and Prima to connect Inventory Management and ERP systems, supporting rapid, reliable data exchange. This approach reduces manual effort, increases accuracy, and ensures compliance, while robust security standards protect sensitive data throughout the integration process.
Surfacing transaction errors and reconciliation debt
Standard dashboards often mask operational drift until it affects the bottom line. We provide visibility into the specific transactions that fail to sync between WAIR For Retail and Prima, such as unrecognised SKUs or mismatched warehouse statuses. Our platform surfaces these hidden issues early, allowing operations teams to resolve data errors before they compound into major reconciliation debt at month-end. Instead of guessing why stock levels are inconsistent, you gain clear sight of every inventory movement status across both systems. This monitoring identifies where manual intervention is required to maintain the accuracy of stock-on-hand figures and financial value.
Handover for finance and operations teams
Handover focuses on ensuring finance and operations teams own the daily health of the integration. We transition the operating model to your team, clearly defining where item masters live and how stock movements in WAIR For Retail should reconcile against Prima. Finance teams learn to identify and resolve valuation discrepancies, while operations teams oversee stock-on-hand alerts. Training covers how to read exception logs within the integration layer to distinguish between master data errors and temporary sync delays. All documentation is written as an operational reference for the people running the business, not as a technical archive for IT. This ensures your team can manage month-end close and stock accuracy without external dependency.
Managing data integrity and sync exceptions
Following launch, we provide ongoing monitoring to ensure your inventory data remains synchronised. We take ownership of detecting sync exceptions, such as unmapped SKUs or API connection issues, and escalate them to the relevant internal teams for correction. This proactive support model prevents small data errors from turning into large financial discrepancies. We work with you to refine the integration as your SKUs or warehouse locations evolve, maintaining a reliable link between WAIR For Retail and Prima.
Common failures
Inconsistent SKU formatting
Operational impact: Prima often uses formatting for product codes that may not match WAIR For Retail exactly. If these are not aligned, the integration can create duplicate records. This results in fragmented stock levels across two entries for the same product, making accurate fulfilment difficult and distorting inventory valuation on the balance sheet.
Prevention / Action: Enforce a strict mapping rule between WAIR identifiers and Prima product codes. The integration should include a validation step to ensure identifiers match perfectly. Establish Prima as the item master and ensure new SKUs are created in Prima before being synchronised with WAIR.
Misinterpretation of 'On Order' status
Operational impact: A common failure occurs when stock that is currently 'on order' or in transit is misinterpreted as available inventory. This causes WAIR to display stock that has not yet been physically received. Customers may purchase items that are not yet pickable, leading to backorders and fulfilment delays.
Prevention / Action: Ensure the integration maps to Prima's 'Physical Stock' rather than 'On Order' fields. Stock updates should only trigger once the goods-in process is finalised. This ensures the available-to-sell figure in WAIR reflects real units ready for despatch.
Mapping errors in warehouse locations
Operational impact: Failure to map specific WAIR locations to the correct Prima bin or warehouse code causes inventory updates to land in default locations. This leads to false out-of-stocks if stock is physically split across zones but Prima only recognises the primary bin. It results in poor stock rotation and inaccurate replenishment orders.
Prevention / Action: Create a dedicated mapping between WAIR location IDs and Prima warehouse codes. Any stock movement in WAIR must be routed to the specific corresponding location in Prima. The system should flag any movement to an unmapped location for manual review.
Frequently asked questions
Which system is the source of truth for inventory?
WAIR For Retail serves as the definitive system of record for all physical inventory quantities and movements. It pushes finalised stock level data into Prima, which uses this information for financial reporting and fulfilment logic. This one-way flow avoids source-of-truth ambiguity where Prima's records and WAIR's physical stock fall out of step.
How does this integrate with Prima's stock statuses?
A common failure point is when various stock statuses in Prima reflect warehouse allocations that haven't been picked. We configure the integration to sync physical stock counts from WAIR to ensure Prima reflects reality. This prevents issues where the storefront shows stock that is not actually available for despatch.
What happens if SKU formats are inconsistent?
Prima often uses specific formatting in its product records. If identifiers are not exactly aligned, the integration will fail to match records, causing orphaned stock transactions. We implement a mapping process to ensure identifiers match perfectly across both systems before any inventory data moves.
How does the integration handle warehouse locations?
The integration maps WAIR location IDs to specific Prima warehouse or bin codes. Without this mapping, inventory updates may fall into a default location, creating false out-of-stock signals even when physical items are present. Proper location mapping ensures fulfilment teams in Prima see exactly where stock is held.
Does the integration support frequent stock updates?
To prevent overselling, inventory levels typically synchronise on a high-frequency schedule. We balance this against the needs of the finance team in Prima. Stock adjustments are managed to ensure finance can audit the movements without the noise of constant fluctuations during the peak trade day.