Every inventory write-off was a surprise to finance.
And a surprise to nobody in the supply chain.
The planner saw the launch slip six months ago. The commercial team knew the promotion had not performed. The numbers on screen told the story clearly.
Nobody adjusted them.
Not because they did not know. Because it was not clear whose call it was to make.
- The forecast that needed cutting belonged to commercial.
- The inventory that needed reducing was tied to a launch date the product team had not officially moved.
- The promotion had underperformed. The stock sat on the books because writing it down meant challenging a number marketing was still defending.
Each adjustment crossed a functional line. And in most organisations, decisions that cross functional lines belong to no one until the P&L makes them unavoidable.
Write-offs do not arrive without warning.
They arrive when accounting catches up with what everyone already knew.
By the time the question is “how did this happen?” the answer is almost never a lack of information. It is a lack of clarity about who was accountable for acting on it.
Inventory write-offs are not market surprises.
They are the cost of cross-functional decisions with no owner.