Holiday demand no longer arrives in a single December surge; it breaks into waves—Singles’ Day previews, Black Friday, Cyber Week, last-mile cut-offs, and a January returns peak. As online spending grows in the US and UK, those waves play out differently by category: electronics and toys rise early, apparel and home stretch into late December, and grocery sees weather-driven click-and-collect spikes. That variability exposes the limits of spreadsheet planning. When orders double, ad-hoc purchase orders and manual reconciliations quickly hit their limits; ERP for small business replaces those brittle workarounds with a central record for orders, inventory, fulfilment, payments, and returns, giving teams shared, real-time data to manage volatility.
This article outlines seven ERP practices small teams can implement before peak season and refine for the returns surge. The recommendations reflect patterns reported across online stores, marketplaces, and retail partners.
1) Protect Availability with Forecasting and Safety Stock Rules
Configure demand planning to use historical daily sales, current conversion trends, and the marketing calendar, then layer supplier lead times and variability to set item-level safety stock and reorder points. This approach—standard in inventory management—aims to surface stockout risk early rather than perfectly predict demand. In published cases, forecast-driven replenishment has been associated with substantial reductions in stockouts.
2) Orchestrate Omnichannel Orders Without Firefighting
Use the ERP’s order management to route automatically: ship-from-store when local stock exists, aggregate marketplace orders into pick waves, and split shipments when backorders would cause misses. Even a handful of clear routing rules can make a noticeable difference, such as prioritising the nearest fulfilment point for tight delivery promises and grouping the rest of the orders into fixed daily waves. Don’t over-engineer. Start with three rules: allocation priority, wave frequency, and a clear backorder policy communicated at checkout and in pick-pack screens.
3) Tighten Cash Flow with Automated Payment and BNPL Reconciliation
Holiday peaks amplify fees, chargebacks, and timing differences—especially as BNPL usage reaches record levels. Automating reconciliation—ingesting payment-provider reports, matching them to orders, and posting settlements, fees, and disputes—combined with a simple dispute/exception dashboard, helps finance teams manage volume during peak periods.
4) Get in Front of the Returns Tsunami with Return Merchandise Authorisations
January’s returns surge can overwhelm small teams, particularly when return reasons and dispositions aren’t structured. Implementing RMAs with reason codes and clear dispositions (e.g., restock, refurbish, liquidate, donate) helps triage volume and surface root causes; size/fit often ranks among the top reasons. Linking return data back to the original promotion enables contribution-margin analysis by campaign and informs discounting before the next season.
5) Guard Gross Margin During Promotions
Discounting without discipline is an expensive habit. Use the ERP’s pricing and profitability tools to model stacked promos and shipping subsidies by SKU and channel. Establish contribution floor rules that block loss-making baskets, and surface alerts when free-shipping thresholds or bundle offers erode margin. Setting contribution floors in the ERP for clearance and promotional items helps stop unprofitable baskets before they go live and keeps discounting within limits that the business can afford.
6) Build Supplier Resilience Before Cut-offs Bite
Configure vendor scorecards that track lead-time accuracy, fill rates, chargebacks, and defect rates. Use them to prioritise purchase orders when capacity is tight and to renegotiate terms on the back of hard data. Add simple EDI or portal confirmations so suppliers commit to dates you can promise to customers. When supplier scorecards are used consistently, it becomes easier to shift orders towards vendors that deliver on time more often and to reduce the amount of last-minute scrambling when capacity is tight.
7) Create an Executive Rhythm with Live, ERP-Driven Dashboards
In peak season, speed of decision beats elegance. Stand up a single dashboard showing: orders by channel versus plan; ATP/CTP by top SKUs; late shipments; RMA volume by reason; settlement delays and chargebacks; and supplier OTIF. Meet daily for fifteen minutes. Decide what to stop, start, or escalate. After New Year’s, shift to a January playbook: accelerate refund posting to protect satisfaction scores, fast-track returns that can be resold, and reconcile settlements twice daily until volumes normalise. Document what broke, what worked, and which configurations you’ll lock in for next year.
Examples That Mirror Peak Reality
- D2C coffee roaster: A brand running its own online stores and a wholesale channel could bring all orders into a single ERP workflow, align wave picking with courier cut-offs, and see orders leaving the warehouse more quickly without relying on constant overtime.
- Children’s apparel brand: A retailer that starts capturing return reasons in a structured way and linking common “size and fit” issues back to product pages can adjust images, descriptions, and size guides so that more customers choose an exchange instead of a refund.
- Tool distributor: A distributor that regularly reviews supplier performance in the ERP can identify which long-lead items genuinely need extra safety stock and which vendors should be prioritised when disruption hits, so more customer orders are covered when something goes wrong.
None of these wins required custom development—just the discipline to use standard ERP features.
Assigning Ownership: Mapping Roles on a Small Trading Team
Assign clear owners around the ERP workflow so decisions don’t stall under pressure. Operations sets inventory parameters, wave logic, and carrier switches; Finance handles settlement matching, cash forecasting, and dispute ageing; Customer service manages RMA reasons, messaging, and turnaround; Ecommerce governs promo guardrails and product content that reduces returns. The general manager chairs a brief daily stand-up. Document two contingency plays: a simplified pick list when backlog exceeds capacity, and a price-protect policy when supplier delays force substitutions. With roles defined and dashboards live, teams can move through the holiday rush—and the returns surge—with fewer surprises.
