u/Excellent-Quit-4740

I work in ecommerce/warehouse operations. One recurring problem: hold orders, cancellations, address changes, and other exceptions get announced in chats, then buried while orders keep moving.
So I started building an internal tracker/dashboard focused on one workflow first: holds.
Current features:
Create hold
Prevent duplicate holds
Track aging holds
Resolve/release holds
My goal isn’t another dashboard—it’s catching exceptions before bad shipments happen.
Ops people: what would break first in your environment? What am I missing?

Has anyone built software from inside their own company before?

Edit: more info:
I work in warehouse operations for a Shopify-based fulfillment company, and I kept seeing the same issues happen every day:

• Hold orders getting missed
• Address changes getting buried in messages
• Cancellations being communicated across texts, spreadsheets, and verbal updates
• Expedited replacements not always being tracked cleanly

So instead of just complaining about it, I started teaching myself Python and building an internal tool after work.

Current version tracks order alerts, logs actions, stores cases in a database, and gives operators a dashboard instead of relying on scattered communication.

My question for other builders/operators:

At what point do you know you’re solving a real operational problem vs overengineering something that only feels useful because you built it?

Would love honest feedback—especially from anyone who’s built software from inside operations.

Spent the last few years in ecommerce / warehouse ops, and one thing I kept seeing over and over:

A package gets delayed, tracking stops updating, customer reaches out, and now support + ops are both manually digging through carrier updates, Shopify notes, spreadsheets, Slack, etc.

It’s weird because the shipment usually isn’t “lost” yet… it’s just sitting in limbo with no clear signal.

That made me start building a small Python tool after work to flag stalled shipments earlier and give support a faster heads-up before tickets pile up.

Not selling anything—still early and mostly researching.

For anyone in ecommerce ops/support:

What repetitive shipping or post-purchase issue wastes the most time on your team right now?

Spent the last few years working in ecommerce/warehouse ops and started noticing the same problems over and over:

\- Orders with incomplete addresses still getting pushed through
\- Out-of-stock items creating manual spreadsheet cleanup
\- Support tickets for damaged/missing items eating up time

Instead of just complaining about it, I started building a Python tool after work to automate some of it.

Current idea:
Catch order issues before they hit fulfillment + help draft support responses automatically.

Not selling anything—still early.

Mostly curious:

If you’ve worked in ecommerce ops, what repetitive problem annoyed you the most?