Prevent shipping from locations without stock

[Glitterbels]

Hi All,

I have 2 stock locations in my store, one is in the US and set up to only ship to the US, and the other is in the UK and is set up to do UK and international shipping (excluding US). The issue I am having is that when a product is out of stock in the UK location, people in markets that use that location are still able to order the product and it is causing me to oversell.

Is there any way to set it so that if a product is out of stock in one location but in stock in another, customers from the first location are unable to purchase it?

[StephensWorld]

Hey @Glitterbels,

I don't believe it's possible to do this. It's always going to ship from the closest location that has inventory. So if you're out of stock in the US, but have stock in the UK, and an American customer is trying to purchase, then it's going to try and fulfill the order from the UK location's stock. 

I'm not sure if there's an app that can handle this for you ... I would normally recommend running 2 separate stores, since you don't want any cross-over between inventories. 

Sorry I couldn't be of more help on this one!

Cheers,

Stephen

[Glitterbels]

That's a pain, so there is no way to restrict a Market or country to only have their orders fulfilled by a single stock location such as US customers only being fulfilled by US stock location whereas all other countries are served by the UK stock location?

[wildcommunityuk]

Hey, we're in exactly the same position - we have multiple warehouse locations with their own inventory management, we use order routing but there's no option to force "Stay within the destination market" rule - it says "When available" so it's more of a preference than a rule...

Very strange to not have this option baked into Shopify! Did you find an app or workaround to this @Glitterbels ?

[Glitterbels · Accepted solution]

Hi @wildcommunityuk, I agree it is weird it is not standard in Shopify. Yes after some digging I found the app Multi‑Location Inventory Info - Multiple Location Inventory management - Shopify | Shopify App Store. This app allows you to disable the "Add to cart" button if the item is out of stock in that location as well as prevent people checking out in a location if the item is out of stock there. The support is great too, helped me with the issues I hit and now I no longer have the overselling issue.

[DavidNZSSI]

I don't believe you can do this within Shopify, but perhaps there's a plugin available? Or another avenue to investigate could be inventory management systems. These systems can provide real-time inventory updates across different locations. When a product goes out of stock in one location, the system can automatically update its availability for customers in relevant markets. Not ideal I know but just one possible solution. Good luck!