How can we adjust to unexpected inventory management changes?

[NeilSlinde]

This is the kind of behavior which makes me want to change our company away from shopify completely and never get near shopify in my own business. 

Once again Shopify has updated the UI without warning and explanation on what they are changing while not taking into account the different ways businesses are run. I fail to see a reason for this change in inventory management and ignores companies who drop ship. This is not the first time that major changes have been made in the UI, most of which have forced changes in SOP. The UI change we want is to have the search bar back without being hidden behind a button requiring an extra click every time you want to access your data. If anything this update should have been done as an optional change or an Admin choice within the settings not an auto opt-in. 

Whoever is in charge of UI design and changes needs to spend some time using the product running a store. 

[Emma82]

Please can you elaborate on the change if you know more. We have had some issues tonight with how Shopify displays on hand inventory and was hoping it was a glitch. 

does it now show “available” inventory - eg. Including stock that has sold but hasn’t yet been shipped. Vs unsold. 

[Emma82]

I’ve found an article on the update now and understand a bit more. Let’s hope this change is short lived! 

[Richie_Ramone]

Link please?
I'm furious.

[Emma82]

It doesn’t fully explain it but I found these 2 links with a bit more information…. 

https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/enhanced-inventory-tracking-with-on-hand-and-unavailable-quantit...

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/inventory/managing-inventory-quantities/inventory-states

[Emma82]

Only slight positive we’ve found is that at a top line product level in the “All products” area, or in collections does still show the actual available unsold inventory.

But as soon as you click into a specific product it switches to show “on hand” and you then have to click into each variant further to then discover how much you actually have available and unsold. 

[NeilSlinde]

https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/enhanced-inventory-tracking-with-on-hand-and-unavailable-quantit... Here is the link Emma82 shared below about the change. 

[LindsNerd]

I read through this link, but I am failing to understand why this needs to change what field is visible at a glance through the app. I can’t think of any circumstance where I would need to know at a glance how many of an item I physically still have but is already sold. 

However I do VERY FREQUENTLY need to know at a glance how many of an item we have still available - as in not already sold.

 I’m hoping it was a mistake and something they’re planning to fix.

[LindsNerd]

I agree with both of these complaints. The hidden search bar is annoying because I am using it CONSTANTLY and have to make an extra click every single time. 

Now we’ve noticed when viewing inventory in the app, we’re only seeing the “On Hand” quantity instead of the “Available” quantity which is not helpful AT ALL. If I want to be able to glance at inventory to see what’s available, now I have to do that at my computer. Newsflash - I’m not always sitting at my computer but I do always have my phone with me. 

Why are they spending time changing things that are not helpful instead of working on things that would actually improve functionality? At the very least we should be able to have settings to choose what we see and don’t see in our own shop. 

[Emma82]

Agree it’s really frustrating and going to make managing stock levels very hard. 

you can still view your “available” stock on your phone but it involves multiple extra clicks. 

click on the “more” button near the inventory section of a product and then click on the on hand units and it breaks it down into available, committed, incoming etc. 

[LindsNerd]

Oh yeah, I figured I could get to it eventually from the app. It’s just that I’m trying to see quickly at a glance how many (if any) I have of each of 45 variants of a product so that’s A LOT of extra clicks and extra time. 

Very much hoping it was a mistake and it gets fixed.

[Username2023]

I also chatted with Shopify support for about 30 mins yesterday explaining how the "on hand" amount isn't what retailers need to see. We need to be able to quickly look at the ACTUAL available inventory amounts from the bulk edit products screen & individual product pages. I was told they would give my feedback to the developers, but there was nothing they could do to help me out. So frustrating. 

[NeilSlinde]

Yup, thats the response I get every time and nothing ever gets changed back or fixed. Their design team has never worked in retail or in a merchant setting and it shows.

[simcha_jacobowi]

Attention Shopify: Your latest change messed up the bulk inventory import process with the new added columns. You made 'available' a calculated field which can't be updated via the bulk import. Your 'available' calculation takes on hand and subtracts committed. This causes a problem when importing drop ship inventory from a supplier who already knows about your committed order and factors that into their available quantity feed. E.g., 2 drop ship pieces are available from a dropship supplier. An order is placed for 1 piece. The order is submitted to the dropshipper. Shopify shows 2 on hand, 1 committed, 1 available. Drop shipper sends inventory qty update showing 1 available. I import it via bulk import in the on hand field (which is now the only field I can use to import inventory as the others are ignored in the import). Shopify updates my inventory to 1 on hand, 1 available, 1 committed. The drop shipper ships the order and I add the tracking number in shopify. Shopify now shows 0 committed 0 on hand, 0 available when in fact i have 1 piece available. Ridiculous! at least let me modify the committed field via bulk import to get around the issue. 

[lunchboxrecords]

Yes these other fields are useless if they can't be modified via import. I tested the available vs on hand and that does not work either. Since I have a physical location I sometimes need to keep on hand inventory of the site for local shoppers but it doesn't allow for that either without just changing the whole on hand inventory, so not sure what the point of those columns are.

[rhdw1]

This has pushed me over the edge and now need to find an alternative to Shopify. They just changed  my inventory for hundreds of items because of this. And didn't even give me advance notice. This will cost me so many hours - the information I need was there one minute and gone the next. Absolutely infuriating. Goodbye, Shopify.

[Trevor]

Hey, everyone. 

Thanks for raising your concerns about the changes to the inventory area. We've responded in more detail to explain the changes on this thread. 

We're aiming to keep the conversation in one place and avoid multiple threads being created for the same topic. For this reason, we'll be closing this topic for future replies. 

If you believe that replies are still warranted here, then please send me a message with your reasoning. I'll be happy to review and reconsider the choice. 

Thank you!