App for Tracking Packaging Inventory

[Harrison998]

Hi,

As my business has been growing, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure we always have stock of our packaging stock. Boxes, stickers, shipping satchels, etc.

I have been looking through the Shopify App Store, however, I have not been able to find an app that would be able to track this for us.

Ideally I would like it to automatically deduct this stock for each order along side the number of products being purchased.

If an app does not exist that does this, is there a way to automate a spreadsheet for this?

Or, how do other business' track this?

Thank you,

Harrison

[Dirk]

Hey there, @Harrison998! Thanks for reaching out today. I really appreciate your question today. Admittedly it took quite a bit of digging and research but I think I found a workaround that will essentially make this work for you. 

Basically, you would be able to create your packaging materials as "products" in the back end of Shopify and keep them hidden/unpublished from the online store. By having a product in Shopify, you can assign it inventory numbers which our system can help track for you.

From there, you could leverage an inventory app that connects products together. There is a third-party app called connected inventory that allows you to do this. Its main purpose is for when you're selling a product kit (such as a camera kit) that when purchased will reduce the inventory of the individual components of the kit (lens, camera bag, etc.) when it's ordered. You would be able to assign your packing material product to all of your store products so that when one of them is from, the packaging material inventory is reduced as well.

This app offers a 7-day free trial for you to utilize to see if it functions in a way that suits your needs!  Let me know if this helps. If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

[Harrison998]

Thank you Dirk!

[reya31]

Hi!

Do you know if Shopify Flow can be used for tracking the packaging?
The trigger could be an order being fulfiled and the inventory of the packaging products created on Shopify would decrease as a result of the action,

Let me know if this could work?

[lollygag]

Hi Dirk

interesting idea but this only works if all products goes to the same size box

[Edward-Newgate]

Hi @Harrison998 

I think you should have a look around this list of 22 Best Shopify order tracking apps. These 22+ Best Shopify Order Tracking Apps from hundreds of the Order Tracking reviews in the market (Shopify Apps Store, Shopify Apps) as derived from Avada Commerce Ranking which is using Avada Commerce scores, rating reviews, search results, social metrics.

Hope it helps!

[jennabeastmode]

Perhaps you can do this:

1. Use Google Sheets and connect to the Shopify API to pull in your orders. Just search for an api connection add-on: https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/search/api

[Vestirsi]

Hey, how did you go with this? Im often running out of packaging, and spending hours each month counting packaging, so would love a way to automatically have packaging supplies (boxes, bags, shippers, stickers etc) tracked in shopify and automatically reduced in qty as sales are made. Did you try the suggestion below? Have you had any luck?

[seb1222]

Did you find a solution? Also interested...

[seb1222]

For anyone that may come across this in the future... what I ended up doing is signing up for shipstation (which incidentally had much better shipping rates than shopify for me) and then set up packaging profiles (for e.g., I know every time I ship an 8x8 box, it will include one mailing label, 10" of tape, and a sticker). At the end of the month, I export the shipments from shipstation and count up each of the different packaging profiles and then record them in QBD, which I use to actually track how much remaining inventory I have, more or less. 

Another person I spoke to uses Cin7 to track inventory - I haven't looked into (it looks expensive), but perhaps another trail to follow.