October 5, 2023

Shopify Inventory Management: How To Track Stock For Your Business

Optimize your Shopify inventory management and track stock effectively for your business. Learn expert tips and strategies for seamless stock control.
Shopify Inventory Management: How To Track Stock For Your Business
Shopify Inventory Management: How To Track Stock For Your Business

Running out of stock or having too much inventory can be a nightmare for any ecommerce business owner on Shopify. 

With Shopify as one of the most popular ecommerce platforms, it is crucial to stay on top and ahead by managing your inventory efficiently. With effective inventory management, you can minimize the risks of losing out on sales and incurring extra costs. 

Whether you’re just starting your ecommerce business or you’re a force to be reckoned with, read on as we go through this guide to help you manage your inventory, and maximize profitability. 

What is Shopify inventory management?

Simply put, Shopify inventory management is the process of overseeing and monitoring how products move in and out of your Shopify store. 

The process includes planning, storing, auditing, coordinating, and controlling orders right from production to the point of sale. 

Let’s use a very practical example - you sell clothes on your Shopify store and you want to keep track of your sales, revenue, and future opportunities. 

To do this, you need to know how many clothes you need to sell and how many clothes you need in stock. With effective inventory management, you can avoid missing out on sales opportunities or ending up with extra clothes you can’t sell. 

Why is Shopify inventory management important? 

  1. Avoid spoiled or deadstock 

If you sell food or personal care items with expiration dates, you run the risk of having a bunch of expired products rotting in your storage if you don’t manage your inventory properly. 

You may also have items that have gone out of season or style. Managing your inventory effectively will help keep track of products, forecast sales, and avoid ending up with stock you can’t sell. 

  1. Avoid excess storage costs 

Storage costs depend on how much and how long you store products in a warehouse. If you’re using a third-party storage facility, this means you can incur extra costs from having too much inventory just collecting dust. With proper Shopify inventory management, you can ensure you have just the right amount of stock to fulfill your orders and avoid unnecessary costs. 

  1. Improve customer experience 

By managing your Shopify inventory effectively, you can forecast your delivery and ensure you fulfill customer orders just as promised. Good customer experience can get you better reviews, and repeat purchases.  

Benefits of Shopify inventory management 

One of the reasons Shopify stands out as one of the best ecommerce platforms is that it comes with an array of tools including inventory control that help with your ecommerce business operations. Here are a few benefits of Shopify’s inventory management: 

  • You can set individual listings in various categories and track inventory for each listing. 
  • You can create versions of one product to reflect various components like size, pricing, weight, etc
  • On Shopify,  you can change inventory quantities for multiple product variants using the bulk editor. 
  • Using Shopify inventory management, you can track and receive transfers between your suppliers and warehouse location. 
  • With the inventory history on Shopify, you can look at the history of a specific product including dates and adjustments made. 

How do you set up inventory on Shopify? 

Here’s how to set up your inventory on Shopify: 

  • On the Products section of your Shopify admin, click on “Add product”. Enter your product details including your product title, description, images, and price. If your product has variants, you can set them up according to size, color, price, etc. You can also set up SKUs for each of your product variants. 
  • For each of your variants, you can assign inventory levels (number of items in stock for the variant). 
  • You can update your inventory levels from Shopify admin or your Shopify POS app.
  • From Settings, you can sync your inventory with POS. In the settings, click on the POS > Products tab and tick the “Enable Product Syncing” box. 
  • To set up low inventory alerts, go to the inventory section on Shopify admin, click on “Inventory alerts” and set up the threshold levels you want. 

Is there inventory management on Shopify POS (Point of Sale)?  

Shopify POS or Point of Sale is an application that enables you to sell products in-store from anywhere in the world. On the app, you can keep track of your inventory, manage your products, and set up low-stock alerts. You can update inventory in bulk and view the history for the past 90 days. 

How does Shopify notify you when you run out of stock? 

To help merchants keep track of their stock, Shopify uses several communication methods. 

  • Out-of-stock notifications: Customers can sign up to receive out-of-stock notifications and get notified when products are back in stock. 
  • Hide out-of-stock products: Sellers can hide products that are out of stock and keep them invisible to customers. 
  • Back-in-stock alerts: Sellers can set up back-in-stock alerts that notify them when products are at their thresholds and need to be restocked. 
  • ‘Coming Soon’ message: Sellers can show customers the ‘Coming Soon’ message to let customers know the product will be back in stock soon. 

Limitations of the Shopify inventory management 

Shopify provides basic inventory management functions. However, Shopify inventory management has imitations that can become a challenge for growing or large businesses. 

Doesn’t allow multichannel selling 

Shopify’s inventory management doesn’t support multichannel selling. This means if you sell on other platforms like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay, you won’t be able to sync data across platforms and monitor inventory levels. 

Tracking capacity is limited 

Shopify only offers basic tracking abilities. This means that if you have complex workflows, it will be daunting to keep track of everything. You will need to adjust inventory manually, which can lead to lots of errors. 

The restocking process is limited 

A larger business will need a system that effectively notifies you of low stocks, recommends order quantities, and automatically generates purchase orders across various platforms apart from Shopify. Unfortunately, Shopify only has basic features that make the restocking process limited. 

5 Shopify inventory management software you can try 

In a fast-paced ecommerce world, using advanced inventory management software is critical to effective inventory management and maximizing your potential. 

With Shopify inventory management software, you can streamline inventory management processes, sell in more channels, get access to advanced data and improve your overall customer experience. 

Here are some Shopify inventory management software you can use for your Shopify store: 

  1. Extensiv Order Manager
  2. Orderhive 
  3. Stocky
  4. Stock Sync
  5. Katana 

Extensiv Order Manager

Extensiv Order Manager is one of the most reliable ecommerce solutions that can help merchants streamline inventory management across multiple platforms. 

From a single dashboard, you can track incoming stock, low-stock levels, and fulfillment performance. With their one-click import feature, you can automate routine tasks, get full alerts on your inventory, get valuable insights, and perform other high-function tasks. 

Pricing

  • $1000 per month 

Pros

  • Extensiv Order Manager has powerful analytics features and detailed reports.
  • You can get useful insights on Extensiv Order Manager to help you improve your business. 
  • The software’s interface is very user-friendly. 
  • The inventory management software has excellent customer support.

Cons 

  • May be quite pricey
  • Doesn’t have many integration options

Orderhive 

Orderhive is a powerful inventory management software that allows you to manage and track your inventory in real time. With Orderhive, you can handle all pre, partial, and back orders in one location, get real-time warehouse updates, build custom order workflows, and much more. 

Pricing

  • Essentials - $95 per month
  • Standard - $195 per month
  • Enhanced - $295 per month 
  • Enterprise - $500 per month
  • Free trial 

Pros

  • Wide integration options
  • Great customer support system
  • Easy to use and implement 

Cons 

  • Shipping features could be improved. 

Stocky

Stocky is an ecommerce solution developed by Shopify for Shopify POS Pro users. With this software, you can easily stock inventory or transfer items between locations. You can count and manage purchase orders effortlessly with only a few clicks of a button. 

Stocky also delivers detailed stock analytics and recommendations. 

Pricing 

  • Free to install but may come with additional charges. 

Pros 

  • Stocky is free to install.
  • Stocky allows you to easily create and manage your orders.
  • You can transfer stock between various locations.
  • In-depth analytics report and demand forecast support. 
  • Order suggestions and low-stock indicators based on data. 

Cons 

  • No advanced forecast tools

Stock Sync

Stock Sync is an effective Shopify inventory management software that helps you sell across multiple channels. Stock Sync is great for dropshipping, as it allows you to share your fees with different suppliers, determine your prices and automate the stocking process. Using matching SKUs, you can import and export store data from various sources like Google Sheets, CSV, etc.

Pricing 

  • $5-$49 per month

Pros

  • Free plan available plus free trial for up to 14 days.
  • You can automate your inventory schedule.
  • Good integration options. 

Cons

  • The setup may be a bit complicated. 

Katana

If you are more into production or manufacturing, Katana may be the best Shopify inventory management software for you. You can get full control of your stock and monitor various aspects of your business, including raw materials, barcode scanning, packaging, etc. You can also sync data across multiple Shopify stores both online and offline. 

Pricing

  • $129 per month 

Pros 

  • Comprehensive order management. 
  • Complete control over your business operations.
  • Easy sync with Shopify stores and various tools. 
  • Excellent customer support. 

Cons 

  • May be a bit pricey 

Track inventory on your Shopify store

As we’ve already established, inventory management is an indispensable part of ecommerce success on Shopify. 

Shopify provides basic inventory control functions. However, they are not as comprehensive for growing or larger businesses. You can go through our guide above to find out what Shopify inventory management software you can invest in. 

 

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