One stock record, reserved on the order
The fragile version of inventory has one number on the storefront and another in the warehouse. A scheduled sync tries to reconcile them every few minutes. That works until two orders arrive inside the interval, a manual order is entered, or a cancelled payment releases stock in only one place.
The reliable version keeps one sellable stock record and changes it in the same server-side transaction that records the order. The storefront can still cache pages for speed, but availability is checked against the source of truth before the order is accepted.
This matters even more for kits and bundles. A kit consuming ten units and a single-unit order must reserve against the same underlying product, or the catalog will oversell while every individual screen appears internally consistent.
