Stock-Out Burst, Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Stock-Out Burst, an alert that fires when a cluster of SKUs drops to zero available-to-sell in a single hour. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it.

Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Ecommerce Platform

Alerts for Stock-Out Burst.

At a glance

A real-time alert that fires when an unusual cluster of SKUs drops to zero available-to-sell inside a single hour on your Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC, formerly Demandware) realm. One product selling out is normal trading. A burst, many SKUs hitting zero at once, is almost never demand; it is a feed, allocation, or sync event, and it can quietly remove a whole category from sale across every site that shares the inventory list. Because SFCC inventory lists are frequently shared across sites, a single burst can hit US, UK, and DE storefronts simultaneously.

What it counts	The number of SKUs whose inventory record transitioned to available-to-sell = 0 within the alert window. It watches the rate of zero-transitions, not the standing count of out-of-stock items (that is the Out-of-Stock Products card).
Why it matters	A sudden cluster of zero-transitions is a leading indicator of a systemic problem: a broken inventory feed, an allocation/reservation bug, an ERP or OMS sync failure, or an inventory-list misconfiguration. Caught in the hour, it is a quick fix; caught the next morning, it is a day of lost sales across every site on the shared list.
Reading the value	Treat any fire as “investigate now”. The figure is the count of SKUs that went to zero in the window. A small steady trickle of genuine sell-throughs will not trip it; a spike will. The signal is the burst, the rate, not the absolute OOS level.
What it is not	It is not the total out-of-stock count and not a low-stock warning. It is specifically about the velocity of SKUs crossing into zero available-to-sell. A high standing OOS count with no recent transitions will not fire this card.
Inventory scope	SFCC tracks availability per inventory list (inventory record / available-to-sell), and a list is often shared across multiple sites. A burst on a shared list affects every bound site at once, which is exactly why it is a Key Metrics alert.
Unit	number (count of SKUs that hit zero in the window)
Time window	RT (rolling 1-hour burst detection)
Alert trigger	>5 SKUs transitioned to inventory available-to-sell = 0 in last 1h
Sentiment key	scc_alert_stock_out_burst
Roles	owner, operations

Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Salesforce Commerce Cloud data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

Worked example

A retailer runs a single SFCC B2C realm with US, UK, and DE DTC sites all bound to one shared inventory list fed nightly from an ERP. At 02:40 on 12 Jun 26 the alert fires. The hour’s zero-transitions:

Time (UTC)	SKUs to available-to-sell = 0	Pattern
02:10 - 02:20	2	Genuine sell-through on two hero SKUs
02:20 - 02:30	14	Same product family, all sizes, one colourway
02:30 - 02:40	23	Adjacent families in the same feed batch
Total in window	39	Burst, well above the >5 threshold

Things to notice:

1. Two of the 39 are real; the other 37 are a feed event. The first two zero-transitions are normal trading. The cluster of 37 across whole product families in minutes is the signature of a broken or partial ERP feed, not demand. The shape (entire families, contiguous batch) is the tell. Do not treat the burst as a sell-out.
2. One list, three sites, one fire. Because US, UK, and DE share the inventory list, all three storefronts lost those SKUs at 02:40 simultaneously. A per-site view would show the same products dark everywhere. This is why the card is realm-level and Key Metrics: the blast radius is the whole estate.
3. The alert bought you the night. Firing at 02:40 means an on-call operator can roll back or re-run the feed before the working day, instead of discovering 39 dead SKUs from a customer complaint at 09:00. Pair the fire with Out-of-Stock Products to confirm how many are still dark after remediation.
4. Revenue exposure is immediate. Those 39 SKUs were selling until 02:40; every hour they stay at zero is lost revenue across three sites. The exposure flows into Revenue at Risk (live), which is the right place to size the dollar cost while you fix the feed.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Card	Why pair it with Stock-Out Burst
Out-of-Stock Products	The standing count. Stock-Out Burst is the rate of new zeros; Out-of-Stock Products is how many are dark right now. Read both: the burst tells you something broke, the count tells you the current damage.
Low-Stock Products	The early-warning layer. SKUs flagged low are the ones most likely to feed the next burst; a list shrinking fast is a precursor.
Revenue at Risk (live)	Sizes the dollar exposure of the burst across sites while you remediate, turning a SKU count into a revenue figure.
SCC Inventory vs Marketplace Listings	A burst can leave SKUs dark on SFCC but still advertised on a marketplace; this cross-platform card catches that mismatch.
Order Processing Backlog	The same feed/sync failure that drives a burst often shows up here too; correlated fires point at a shared root cause.
Active Sites / Storefronts	Confirms the burst is an inventory event and not a site outage; if sites are healthy but SKUs are dark, the problem is the feed.

Reconciling against Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Where to look in Business Manager:

There is no single Business Manager report that equals this card, because SFCC shows you standing inventory state, not the rate of zero-transitions over the last hour. To verify a fire:

• Confirm the dead SKUs: Merchant Tools, Products and Catalogs, Inventory, open the relevant inventory list and check the allocation / available-to-sell for the flagged SKUs. They should read zero (or stock-out) if the burst is real.
• Check the inventory list binding: Administration, Sites, Manage Sites, and the inventory configuration, to see which sites share the list and therefore which storefronts are affected.
• Trace the feed: SFCC inventory updates usually arrive via an import job or a LINK cartridge from the ERP/OMS. Administration, Operations, Jobs (or the import history) shows the last inventory import and whether it succeeded, partial-failed, or wiped quantities.
• Spot-check the storefront: load a flagged product page on each bound site to confirm it shows out of stock.

Because the card detects a one-hour burst and Business Manager reports current state, treat Business Manager as the place to confirm the SKUs are genuinely at zero and to find the failing job, not to match the burst count after the fact.

Why our number may legitimately differ from Business Manager:

Reason	Direction of divergence
Rate vs state. This card counts transitions in an hour; Business Manager shows the standing OOS list. They measure different things and will not match one-for-one.	Not directly comparable
Refresh timing. Available-to-sell changes appear in the API near-real-time; the data warehouse and some BM views lag a few minutes.	Vortex IQ fires slightly ahead of warehouse views
Shared-list scope. The burst is detected at the inventory-list level; a per-site BM check shows the same SKUs dark on every bound site, which can look like multiple separate problems.	One event appears across several sites in BM
Genuine sell-throughs in the window. A few real sell-outs can be part of the count; BM will not distinguish them from the feed-driven ones.	Small over-count of true demand
Re-stock during investigation. If a corrective feed runs while you check, BM may already show stock restored even though the alert fired.	BM higher than the moment of the fire

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

How is this different from Out-of-Stock Products? Out-of-Stock Products is a standing count, how many SKUs are at zero right now. Stock-Out Burst is a rate, how many SKUs crossed into zero in the last hour. A store can have thousands of OOS SKUs with no burst (a slow, normal backdrop) or a clean catalogue that suddenly throws a burst when a feed breaks. The burst is the early-warning signal; the count is the damage report. Read them together.

Why does the alert key on a cluster rather than any single stock-out? Because single sell-outs are normal trading and would make the alert noise. A burst, many SKUs to zero in one hour, is almost never demand. That shape points at a systemic cause: a broken inventory feed, an allocation bug, or a sync failure. Keying on the cluster gives you a high-signal “something broke” alert instead of a constant trickle.

A burst fired but the products are genuinely sold out. Is that a false alarm? Usually no. A genuine simultaneous sell-out of many SKUs is itself worth knowing (a viral moment, a flash sale ending), and the response is the same: confirm in Business Manager, then decide whether to restock, backorder, or hide. The card’s value is surfacing the cluster fast; you decide whether the cause is demand or a defect. The family-wide, contiguous-batch shape almost always indicates a feed event rather than true demand.

We share one inventory list across several sites. Does the burst double-count? No. The card detects the burst at the inventory-list level, so a SKU going to zero is counted once even though it darkens on every bound site. What you will see is the same products out of stock across US, UK, and DE at the same moment, which is the correct picture of the blast radius, not a triple count.

Can I tune the threshold? Yes. The default trigger is more than 5 SKUs to zero in an hour. The alert threshold is configurable per profile in the Alert Rules tab. A very large catalogue with high natural sell-through may want a higher threshold; a curated catalogue where any cluster is abnormal may want a lower one. Tune it to your baseline so the fire stays meaningful.

The burst stopped firing. Does that mean the problem is fixed? Not necessarily. The card detects new zero-transitions; once the burst passes, it goes quiet even if dozens of SKUs are still dark. To confirm recovery, check Out-of-Stock Products for the standing count and re-run or verify the inventory feed. A quiet burst card with a high standing OOS count means the damage is done and not yet repaired.

Where do I see the dollar cost of a burst? This card gives you the SKU count and the “act now” signal. For the revenue exposure, the affected SKUs feed Revenue at Risk (live), which weights them by recent velocity to estimate what is at stake while they stay dark. That is the number to take to an owner or finance lead.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Stock-Out Burst is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Salesforce Commerce Cloud and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English.

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