Shopify Inventory Management: Built-In Tools, Task by Task

This page walks the inventory cycle one step at a time. Each step gets a short explanation and a table of the tasks inside it, and every task links to the page on this site that answers it in full.

What Inventory Management Does Shopify Have Built In?

Every step below happens in the same admin, mostly under Products › Inventory and Analytics › Reports. The table gives each step its screen, the plan boundary Shopify names for it, and the section of this page that explains it.

Tracking and Stock States: Switch It On First

Tracking is a switch on each product or variant: in the Inventory section, turn on Track quantity. Shopify calls it useful when you need to monitor stock levels and prevent overselling, and adds that some product types work better without it. For anything you sell from a shelf, switch it on, including stock you sell on Shopify POS, where tracking also starts with the admin setting.

What On Hand, Available, Committed, Unavailable and Incoming Mean

Once tracking is on, every variant carries five quantities at each location, and only one of them is stock a customer can buy. Shopify defines it in one line:

The other four explain why a product can look stocked in the admin and still read Sold out on the storefront. The table sets them side by side.

The quantities move together. When you edit On hand, Available changes by the same amount, and incoming stock you accept from a purchase order or transfer switches to Available automatically once you receive it; apps may put received stock into a different state.

To see them for your own catalog, open Products › Inventory and pick a location. Every tracked variant is listed at each active location, and the state columns sit side by side.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Products
2. Inventory

Zoom

SKUs, Barcodes and Cost per Item

Stock is counted on variants, and so are the fields that identify it: an SKU for your own catalog, a barcode for scanning, and Cost per item for what each unit costs you. Settle them before you import or count anything, because bulk edits, CSV files and reports all work from them.

Cost per item deserves the most care. Shopify makes entering it optional, yet the Month-end inventory value report counts only products that have one, and each variant has a single static cost that stays fixed when you receive a purchase order or transfer.

When Stock Hits Zero: Keep Selling, Hide or Relabel

Shopify's default protects you: once a tracked item reaches zero, customers can't buy it until you add stock. The option Continue selling when out of stock lifts that block, and Shopify names the cases it is meant for, among them preorders, stock that is about to arrive, and selling first and ordering supplies later.

Two limits travel with it. The option can be selected only when tracking is on, and it doesn't apply to orders placed from Shopify POS, where staff can keep selling at zero and below either way.

If you would rather stop selling at zero, the work moves to the storefront: hide sold-out products from collections, which also needs tracking on and isn't available on the Starter plan, where collections aren't included; hide sold-out variants; or change what the Sold out label says.

Adjusting and Counting Stock

When you click a quantity in the desktop admin, on the Inventory page or a product or variant page, you choose one of two methods. Set to replaces the number, and the history shows the reason you chose, or Manually adjusted if you chose none. Adjust by adds or removes units, and the history keeps showing the movement even when you add a reason. The Add reason option isn't available in the Shopify mobile app. The reasons Shopify offers are:

• Correction, for an inventory error or as a general reason
• Count, Received and Return restock
• Damaged, Theft or loss, and Promotion or donation

A stock count checks what is physically on the shelf against On hand, so you catch damage, admin errors and theft before they turn into stockouts or overstock. You create and manage counts in the admin on a desktop browser, and each count covers one location.

At locations with a POS Pro subscription, staff can also run the count in the Shopify POS app, which needs POS version 11.16 or later.

Changing Many Quantities at Once: Bulk Editor or CSV

Adjusting one variant at a time stops being practical after a large delivery or a full recount. There are two bulk routes, and the first trades history for speed:

The second is an inventory CSV. You can export it with all inventory states, the recommended format that protects against accidental overwrites, or with Available quantities only, which is simpler but has no such protection. The file can't exceed 15 MB.

Restocking: Purchase Orders, Transfers and Low-Stock Alerts

Restocking uses two records that work as a pair. The purchase order holds the deal with your supplier, listing products, quantities, costs, payment terms and supplier details, while the goods themselves move on a transfer:

Once the transfer is in progress, its stock shows as Incoming at the destination; when you receive it, in full or in part, the units you accept become Available, unless the product isn't stocked at that location, and rejected units don't change your inventory. A purchase order isn't required, though: you can receive from a supplier on a standalone transfer. Suppliers are records of their own in the admin, while payments to them are made outside Shopify.

For automated low-stock alerts, Shopify's Stocky migration guide points to Shopify Flow, which is a free app on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. Minimum and maximum levels per variant, for transfers and purchase orders, can be set with custom metafield definitions.

History and Stock Value: Where the Numbers Live

For a single product or variant, View adjustment history shows only the last 180 days of changes. Older changes may sit in the Inventory adjustment changes report, which filters adjustments by SKU, location, staff member, app and adjustment reason. Inventory metrics in Analytics reach back only to October 1, 2023.

Stock value lives in Analytics. Filter Analytics › Reports by the Inventory category and open Month-end inventory value, which totals On hand stock for products that carry a Cost per item, so a product without a cost adds nothing to it; the report covers variants adjusted or ordered in the last three years.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Analytics
2. Reports

Zoom

From October 1, 2026, Shopify changed how inventory reports measure stock, leaving older data as it was:

Several Locations, Life After Stocky, and the Limits

Our multi-location inventory guide covers this whole section in depth, from plan limits and order routing to what replaced each Stocky feature and whether native tools, an app or a custom build fits.

Shopify defines a location as any physical place where you sell products, fulfill orders or stock inventory. Stock is tracked separately at each one, a product has to be active at a minimum of one location to be sellable, and when you add a location, new products are stocked there by default with a quantity of 0. How many active locations you can run depends on your plan.

Stocky closed on August 31, 2026, and its APIs stopped working the same day; transfers, purchase orders, quantity adjustments, stock counts and reports on historical inventory changes now run in the admin, as Shopify's Stocky migration page lists. Your Stocky history didn't come along: old purchase orders and stocktakes didn't move into Shopify automatically, and Shopify promised read-only access to export that data for at least 90 days after August 31, 2026.

Where the built-in toolkit stops

The same migration page is candid about where the admin stops short:

• Each variant has one static Cost per item, which stays fixed when a purchase order or transfer is received.
• Transfers move inventory between locations only, not between bins or zones inside one location.
• Each product has a single Vendor field.
• You can't email a purchase order from the admin.
• The native purchase order CSV upload only adds line items to a new draft purchase order.

For planning, the page points to Sidekick, which can help forecast demand, identify products that need replenishing, and draft the purchase order or transfer for you. If your stock also has to stay in step with accounting or warehouse systems, our guide to Shopify ERP integration compares connectors, iPaaS and custom builds.

The Bottom Line

Apart from Flow for low-stock alerts and a reporting app for ABC analysis on Basic or Lite, you don't need an app to manage inventory in Shopify until you reach one of the edges listed under where the built-in toolkit stops. What decides how well it works is the order you set it up in: tracking first, then clean product data and costs, then counting and restocking routines, with reports last, because they only reflect what the earlier steps recorded.

Frequently Asked Questions