What counts as an exception?
An exception is any event the system cannot resolve on its own and a person has to look at. Typical ones for a product brand:
- Discrepancies: a cycle count that does not match the book quantity, or a bill that does not match the purchase order.
- Sync conflicts: two systems changed the same record and disagree.
- Failed syncs: an order, stock update or invoice that did not reach the other system.
- Risk alerts: oversell risk when channel demand spikes, or a supplier missing delivery windows.
Why put exceptions in one inbox?
Without one, exceptions live in connector error logs, email notifications, a 3PL portal and somebody's spreadsheet. Each one is visible to one person at best, and nothing shows whether it was fixed. One inbox gives every exception an owner, a status and a history, and it shows how many are open right now.
What does an example look like?
A brand starts the day with 14 open exceptions. Nine are failed order syncs from a marketplace outage overnight, three are stock mismatches where the channel shows 120 units and the warehouse ledger shows 112, and two are bills priced above their purchase orders. Grouped by cause, the nine sync failures are one retry, the three mismatches are one recount, and the two bills go to whoever approves payables. Fourteen scattered alerts become four decisions.
What makes an exception inbox useful rather than noisy?
Each item should say what happened, why, and what to do next. An alert that only says "sync failed" sends someone digging through logs. Recurring exceptions should feed a playbook, so the second occurrence takes less time than the first.
How does SuppliFlex handle exceptions?
In SuppliFlex, every discrepancy, conflict and failed sync lands in the exception inbox with the cause and a one-click fix. Task queues organize the work, and a knowledge base covers recurring exceptions. During the beta, the sync conflict policy is "always ask", so conflicts wait for a person instead of being overwritten. See the exception inbox for how it works in the product.