Anyone else frustrated with new "update" re: Inventory vs. On Hand Quantity?

[annafaie]

I just discovered that when I view all products > by vendor > bulk edit, the Column options have changed and now the only way to update Inventory is by using the "On Hand Quantity" column? I raised this issue with Support and after a 2 hours chat, here is what I was told:

Shopify: "Regarding our Support team, yes there is an update regarding the Inventory.

There's a new update when it comes to inventory states. We can't edit the "available" section anymore, instead we can edit the "on hand". So on hand state represents = committed + available. This means this is an expected behavior that when you adjust the on hand, the available would too."

Me: Why did they make that update? It will be a huge timesuck for someone like me who runs inventory differently. Can you pass that feedback along to them? I never have anything on hand - I keep no inventory - my inventory tells me what has been purchased so if all I can see when I edit is "On Hand", I won't be able to bulk edit my Inventory I'll have to go into each products (hundreds) to update manually

Shopify: "I do understand that Anna, and yes I will be passing this feedback of yours with our developers"

Me: So, there is nothing they can do? I'm stuck with this "update"?

Shopify: "As of the moment, the only thing you can do is update your available inventory using "on hand".

On hand represents all inventory a merchant physically has at a location. On hand = Committed (to an order) + Available (for sale) + Unavailable (e.g. draft order reservation). With this release, merchants can no longer edit the Available quantity in Admin: the only manually editable quantity will be On hand."

Me: It's a stupid update b/c not everyone manages inventory this way. I have nothing physically in stock. I don't ship anything or fullfil orders through Shopify

Shopify: "My apologies about the update"

Me: On Hand is nothing that correlates to my business and now I'm forced to use it.

Is anyone else having this issue? It's going to create hours more work for me for my store if I have to update every single product manually.

[Shay · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone!

Thank you all for the feedback and sharing how this update affects your business. We are assessing everyone's use cases and working to re-enable some of these workflows as soon as possible. We already shipped improvements to the Inventory CSV workflow, as follows:

• Re-enabled legacy CSV import which allows you to directly modify your Available values. You can also continue to export the legacy CSV template.
• Significant performance improvements for exporting the new inventory CSV template which includes On hand, Committed and Unavailable states.

We have more coming and will return to this thread with updates as soon as they are shipped. In the meantime, continue to share your experience here and rest assured that all your feedback on this is being heard. 

I am marking this response as the solution to this thread for now so that other merchants can easily follow along with the updates we are shipping on this. 

[Blair · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your patience while we worked on reviewing your feedback and making changes to the experience. We have launched updates to address some of the pain points you’ve shared. Here are the changes we shipped today:

• You can now edit the Available state, as well as On hand. You are able to enter negative inventory quantities into both of these fields.
• Available is now directly editable anywhere you see On hand: the inventory list, product pages, variant pages and bulk editors.
• These changes apply to web Admin only for the time being, but the Mobile app will soon be updated as well.

As a reminder, here’s what we shipped earlier this week:

• Re-enabled legacy CSV import which allows you to directly modify your Available values. You can also continue to export the legacy CSV template.
• Significant performance improvements for exporting the new inventory CSV template which includes On hand, Committed and Unavailable states.

We’d like to learn more about your business to continue building the best solutions for you. Please let us know if these resolve your issues or if you have any questions in this  thread or reach out to our Shopify Support team.

[BBY202]

Yes.  I am also incredibly frustrated with this update.  It is causing a lot of problems because items appear to be sold out when they shouldn't be.  Really hoping Shopify changes it back or at least gives merchants the option to edit both columns.

[annafaie]

Wholeheartedly agree! Why the need for the change? At least, leave it as it was and simply ADD the "On Hand Quantity" column instead of removing "Inventory" altogether.... I will have triple the time updating my stock this week due to the "update"

[Kissys]

Yes! Even after editing it it still will say sold out.  And if you put available when you put a product in you still have to edit the on hand amount its totally ridiculous I hope they change this soon.  It makes zero sense there was no issue in the first place 

[Stylesysters]

Yes it’s an absolute nightmare !!! I just want to see availability the way it was before, it’s beyond confusing now !! 

[RebeccaCombs]

I hate the new update!  We make inventory to order so it sometimes takes a week or two to fulfill on order.  We used the inventory to keep track of how many of an item we could possibly make based on supplies on hand.  No I have no good way to quickly tell how many items are actually available without manually keeping track of my starting inventory and then subtracting out based on sales.  What a time suck!

Who asked for this "update?"

[npoulos]

exact same issue for me here. I depend on products being in minus and brining available back to 0. This on-hand confuses the process so much.

[LoraineIreland]

OMG, why does Shopify change perfectly good functionality?  This is really annoying and frustrating.  It worked FINE before.  I sell a course on my store every Saturday morning for limited numbers (5 at a time).  I used to be able to look at a glance to see how many were left, without having to click into the individual date.  Now, when I look at this stupid "On Hand" thing, it tells me 5 (so looks like nobody booked in), but when I click into the date, it tells me I have eg 3 Committed and 2 spaces left.  Even updating it to increase quantity is confusing because the front page doesn't show what's available.  Please Shopify - for the love of God - please change this back.

[annafaie]

My "On Hand" now seems to be showing what "inventory" used to - so that's good. I was able to use the Bulk Edit like in the past. I still don't understand what prompted the change but at least from my perspective, they have at least fixed the issue that I was having with it. Like the above poster, I rely on inventory to start at 0 and then go negative to show what I've sold and then I need to bring it back to 0 for my next sale date....it appears that "On Hand" is now working just like the "Inventory" number used to work. Anyone else seeing that, too?

[annafaie]

So last week I posted this to the thread: "My "On Hand" now seems to be showing what "inventory" used to - so that's good. I was able to use the Bulk Edit like in the past. I still don't understand what prompted the change but at least from my perspective, they have at least fixed the issue that I was having with it. Like the above poster, I rely on inventory to start at 0 and then go negative to show what I've sold and then I need to bring it back to 0 for my next sale date....it appears that "On Hand" is now working just like the "Inventory" number used to work. Anyone else seeing that, too?"

HOWEVER....now it's reverted back to the bad "update" way that we're all complaining about! What the AF??? I am so confused. I complained, I posted here and then it miraculously changed to where i saw my negative qtys and was able to put them all back to zero in bulk editing - it was glorious. And now???? It's back to all zeros, not showing any of my negative qtys and so now I'll have to go into each and every product to update one by one. Ugh...I hate this with a fiery passion. I do not have the time operate this way. @Shopify  @Shay  - please reply and tell us that you'll add back the option/column for Available again? This is seriously ridiculous for so many of us!!!

[LindsNerd]

I really just do not understand what would be so difficult for @Shopify to KEEP their useless "On Hand" field but also give us back the ability to edit the "available" field?? It's THERE, just let us edit it please! How hard is it really to allow us to choose which inventory metric we want to use for our own shops??

[rhdw1]

This is my situation exactly. So simple but now they've turned it into a nightmare.

[npoulos]

This feature completely messes with products that are made on-demand. I need to be able to edit the available number, not the "on hand" number. It's ridiculous that this isn't opt-in 

[lunchboxrecords]

You also cannot edit the "committed" field even though that is a required field for a csv inventory edit. It is also treating pending preorders and pickup orders as committed until they are picked up or shipped thus messing up the inventory, and if I sync or correct the inventory it then pulls the inventory from the On Hand / available columns when I ship or the customer picks up the order thus making the inventory show less than it is or out of stock

[samirascloset]

Yes! this is a huge issue. My inventory has been off all week because of this. its so stressful and making me lose sales because it is saying out of stock when it is not.

[Shay]

Hi @samirascloset 

I am sorry to hear that your inventory numbers haven't been correct. The changes to the inventory states should not affect your current inventory numbers. If you have noticed any changes to your inventory that were not done by you or any staff, please reach out to our live support to report this along with answers to these questions:

• When did you see these changes happening?
• What products were affected?
• What were the inventory discrepancies you noticed?
• Were you able to see these inventory changes in the inventory history for the products?

To report issues related to inventory changes made without staff involvement please follow these steps:

• Click this link: Shopify Help Center.
• Follow the on screen prompts to sign in, choose your topic and issue
• Select "Live Chat" for support. 
• Share this message with the support advisor you connect with:
  • Hi! I have been asked to reach out by Shay in the community forums (https://bit.ly/3XUqZhl) to report an issue with my inventory changing without any staff involvement. I was told that ticket number 36205451 will have more information for you.

[BlackLab]

We met with 4 other small businesses all using Shopify yesterday and all 4 of us are exploring options outside of Shopify solely because this column is causing us all so much grief. I personally know of some larger business that have contacted Shopify directly about this column disaster as well. Maybe time to short the stock? 🤣

[Noah_D]

@BlackLab ,
Do you have any recommendations for other platforms to look at?

[Alyson01]

Yes let me know as well.

I had a big drop on new arrivals today. Until I fill each order the
inventory “on hand” does not change. I do NOT have time to go update it
before I ship. But I want customers to know what is left its just way too
time consuming.
--
Alyson Jacobson
40 Oak Boutique
908-295-2271
www.shop40oak.com

[BlackLab]

We are looking at WooCommerce and BigCommerce. One of the companies from our BCI group is moving to WooCommerce so I’m going to watch her transition and see how it goes. Our sales are in the millions each year so this is a big decision for us and I’ve been using Shopify since the very early days so I’m honestly hoping they get it together and get all of this sorted so I plan to give it at least another 30-90 days, but when I see Shopify staff commenting on these threads insinuating that there won’t be any improvements  to these issues that everyone is having, that gets me thinking ahead because I can’t/won’t operate our store under these new systems, it’s a disorganized, time consuming nightmare and I don’t run my business like that. The thing is, there are some big Shopify customers complaining about these changes so I cannot see Shopify ignoring this and kicking their heels in, in the end Shopify wants to run a successful company and it’s pretty obvious (all you have to do is Google it) that this update is causing chaos throughout the platform. I went into my store today to add a bunch of new inventory and I input all the product info and inventory I had on hand and saved it all then started getting calls from customers 20 mins later as I was advertising the new products on instagram that everything was already sold out. Nope. Not sold out, Shopify just dumped all the inventory I had saved and reverted everything back to 0 so after spending 4 hours counting everything, inputting the numbers etc, it send every inventory file back to 0. Just infuriating. I don’t have time for this. @Shopify 

[Dawn08]

Thank you for sharing this @BlackLab it's definitely something we will be looking into also.

The number of replies on here that have gone ignored is unbelievable, my last reply was basically 'the developers have no plans to remove this feature', which at this point, with SO many posts saying the same thing, is astounding. 

@Shay @Blair do you have any updates at all for us regarding improvements? The number of posts on here saying the exact same thing surely counts for something? We're asking for help here, it's damaging our businesses.

[rhdw1]

yes, this is now a nightmare for me. They changed all of my negative inventory to zero so now I do not know how many I need to make for each of my hundreds of items. They did not even let us know that this change was going to take affect, so I did not have the chance to get the info from my store. Now I have to search hundreds of orders to figure this out. And the search function is so broad so this is taking even longer. What is the point of being able to "continue selling when out of stock" if I can't see these sales?? I am going to change to another ecommerce provider as soon as possible. I cannot trust Shopify any longer. 

[HCOnline]

You also can't manually adjust further into the negative! It's so frustrating! I feel ya!

[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. How could they think this would be a helpful change? It's literally causing a lot more work / time for inventory management now. 

[sd123]

This update is horrible.  I am constantly updating my inventory on a daily basis and this new "on hand" feature is not useful.  Shopify needs to stop implementing these changes.  Workflows are increased after every update they have done.  I do not need to see "on hand".  They need to rollback this update.  

[Josh-Jameson]

It's absolutely insane, it's going to add so much more work and confusion to how we manage our stock. They've told us it won't be changed either and reverting back to how it was won't be an option. Really disappointing as we spend thousands with Shopify Plus. 

[Username2023]

There is absolutely no reason the developers can not simply add 1 extra column to show "available" from the bulk edit view. That way, the folks who need to see the ACTUAL inventory levels can select that field, and the folks who want to see the "on hand" levels (no one) would still be able to select that field if needed. HELLO SHOPIFY SUPPORT PLEASE CONSIDER THIS REQUEST

[Shay]

Thank you everyone for your feedback! We are sorry to hear this update has caused concerns and we appreciate you bringing it to our attention. We want to take a chance to clear up some confusion around the new inventory states. 

On hand has been introduced to give you a distinction between what’s stocked at a location (On hand) and how much inventory is Available for sale. On hand represents all the inventory you have at a location. This includes the inventory you have Committed to orders, set aside as Unavailable, or Available. Your On hand quantity is the number you’d input after a stock count. You can learn more in our Help Center.

If you don’t keep physical inventory

You should set your On hand quantity to 0 and check the “continue selling when out of stock” checkbox for that item.

As orders come in, unfulfilled items will be tracked under the Committed inventory state. Click the Committed quantity for a product from your inventory list to see a list of relevant orders.

The Available quantity will be decreased accordingly to match the number of Committed items. Items will continue to be sold while the “continue selling when out of stock” box is checked.

If you use negative inventory as a prompt to take action

You should set your On hand quantity to 0 and check the “continue selling when out of stock” checkbox for that item.

As orders come in, unfulfilled items will be tracked under the Committed inventory state. Click the Committed quantity for a product from your inventory page to see a list of orders contributing to the Committed value.

The Available quantity will be decreased accordingly to match the number of Committed items. Just as before, you can use this state as an indicator to take action. Items will continue to be sold while the “continue selling when out of stock” box is checked.

If you want some more in-depth information about which items have been sold and in what quantity, you can use one of the following methods:

• Review your unfulfilled orders on the Orders page. From here, you can fulfill orders to ensure that your inventory tracking stays up to date.
• Navigate to Analytics > Reports and look at “Product Sell Through Rate” to see the quantity of individual items sold across a period of time
• If you are on the Shopify plan or higher, navigate to Analytics > Reports and look at “Sales by product variant SKU”. This report tells you how many orders there were for each product in the report’s timeframe. This will be especially helpful if you make products on-demand.

Items that are committed to unfulfilled orders (pre-orders, pick-up order, orders that require shipping, etc) will be taken out of the Available state and moved to the Committed state. This is because these products are no longer available for a sale and thus should not be visible on your storefront. This behavior has not changed since the inventory update, so you can keep using your current workflows!

As always, we welcome your feedback so please don't hesitate to continue sharing how this change impacts your business. If the explanations outlined above do not suit your specific business workflows, don’t hesitate to contact Shopify Support so we can work with you to find a suitable solution.

[TC11]

So frustrating!  Is there a way to at least "reset" the committed field.  I have a bunch of very old orders that were fulfilled in a different way, and therefore never "fulfilled" in shopify.

[lunchboxrecords]

The treatment of pickup orders has changed and is counter-intuitive to any version of inventory management I am aware of. Those items are SOLD and not available to anyone but the purchaser, and fulfilled for all intents and purposes. 

example:

If I have 100 copies of an item, sell 80, ship 60 and have 20 pickup orders, it still shows 40 on hand. If I sell 20 more in my shop and those pickup orders have not been picked up I don't know to reorder because it still says I have 20 on hand. I have 15000 unique items in my store and cannot remember every single item that is in pickup limbo, thus need proper inventory numbers. 

Also if I sync my inventory with my warehouse/receiving software, it's going to show 20 on hand, because that is what is unsold. However, this new method will then show 0 available for sale online because there are 20 pickup orders. This is asinine.

[gentlemon]

Hey Shay, 

When will the committed inventory amount finally available on the API?

Since the initial release, it is not available through API. See attached video

[Username2023]

@Shay Thanks for responding. I am not confused about what the "on hand" amount is showing, I'm confused as to why the update removed the ability to see our actual "available" inventory amounts (not committed amounts) from the bulk edit products screen.

Why was it removed/changed to the "on hand" amount? The on hand amount is not at all helpful for retailers who want to see a snapshot of inventory AVAILABLE to sell. 

Our store offers an in-store pick up option, those orders/items are not removed from the "on hand" inventory until the orders have been picked up and fulfilled. It could be 2 or more weeks before customers pick up their orders/the orders are marked as fulfilled. So the "on hand" amount is useless - those items are already sold. Retailers need to see what's actually available so they know when to order more inventory. 

The bulk edit products view needs to have the option to show the "available" amount, not the "on hand" amount. When will this option be added back into Shopify? 

It can't be that difficult to add back the "available" column from the bulk edit products view. There are many other Shopify users here requesting the same thing. Hopefully this will get fixed soon. 

(PS - there were many other discussion threads regarding the "on hand" column being useless for retailers, I received a notice that those other threads will be "closed" now. Please don't think this is an issue that's only affecting a small amount of Shopify customers. There have been multiple discussion threads on here complaining about the recent update.) 

Here's the notice I received for other inventory threads - "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. "

---Another issue, the "inventory" tab is way too cluttered to be used as a helpful tool for viewing "available" inventory levels since there is no option to filter by "status". There should be an option to filter out all "archived" products from the "inventory" pages. Retailers will often archive seasonal items and bring them back for a short amount of time when those products are in season. Without the option to filter our archived items, the "inventory" tab is useless. 

Thanks for reading & hopefully using our feedback to improve Shopify for retailers. 

[annafaie]

Agree with Username2023 - It's all about the Bulk Edit screen allowing su to add the column for Availble back so we don't have to click into each individual item profile to make updates to hundreds or thousands of products. Please add that column choice back into the Bulk Edit column selection. PLEASE!!!!

[SOMFootwear]

Agree!!! @annafaie @Username2023 And others. Example: The inventory should allow us to see and filter on one page: Incoming, Available, Committed and Filtered ex: Active with certain quantity.  That is the only way to know what is in production (Incoming), what is on shelf (available), how many orders waiting (committed). Filtering was allowing us to see which one was low in inventory. Can't do that anymore. Custom view is no longer working either. Come on Shopify, you are better than that usually!

[Smithy666]

Absolutely agree with this. The inventory page should show all of this information. If I'm now filtering by supplier I can't see what is already on order with them ("Incoming") from the inventory page, so now I risk double ordering because i can't see what is incoming. The old system worked perfectly. Why do Shopify keep making stupid changes when the existing system worked. They keep doing this more and more...eg, they changed the code for incoming stock ETAs and now they don't display correctly. They are still working to fix the error they created last December with the "update" 

[Janusa]

I think it would be better just to go back to exactly how it was, even if they ad a new colum we won't be able to tell from a quick glance if a product is in stock. We always  have to get inside each product to check

[BooksAndCoffee]

I’m really frustrated by this too. We have multiple options for the same type of item, and rather than being able to move an available variant and letting the rest be out of stock, we have to figure out what’s available? 

getting more and more frustrated with the Shopify updates to the interface. 

[Username2023]

Here's another real life example of how terrible the update is for Shopify customers who manage/track inventory. 

From the product page, it now only shows "on hand" amounts unless you scroll over to see the "available", "committed", "incoming" amounts. 

Well, when you scroll over to view the available amount, it cuts off the name of the variant!

So if there's a product with lots of variants, it's impossible to keep this straight when trying to get a quick view of "available" inventory levels for variants. 😩

[Janusa]

Exactly  is should SHOW THE AVAILABLES😢😢😢 

[Username2023]

@Shay  When will this be corrected? 

[rhdw1]

Even if they deign to fix this, I will never be able to trust Shopify again. They willy nilly changed MY inventory numbers and they expect me to be okay with that.

[rhdw1]

Even when I go to each individual variant, the "committed" number is WRONG in about 50% of the cases. I am still in shock that Shopify changed MY inventory numbers. I have 200+ numbers that are WRONG. Your justification/explanation makes no sense and you've lost a customer in me. 

[Janusa]

Rebecca  this already happen to me 3 times this week. Where the available stock is actually wrong and sold without me having it I'm stock. A nightmare to not be able to count on the stock. 

[G514]

Same here! I keep getting sales on products I don't have in stock, it happened this morning again😑

[npoulos]

Hi Shay thanks for clarifying,

there are still issues being caused by this though and it’s not a simple change of terminology. 

for example my products are made on demand and for bundled products I use an app to assign say 2 products to 1 so that when a person purchases the 1 product the inventory of the 2 included in it are updated. 

a limitation in Shopify is that orders made in another currency than your setup cannot be edited. 

because of this, a lot of apps that can bundle multiple items into 1 purchasable item update the available count of the individual items within the bundle, while “committing” the bundled product to the order. 

these items included in the bundle never get “committed” to an order since the international orders cannot be edited. Instead, the available inventory number for them is updated so that stock still aligns. 

this means a product can have a status of 0 committed and -1 available. 

in this scenario, this new feature changes “on hand” to -1. Now when I make the items in the bundle, and update the “on hand” by adding +1, instead of it showing time that I have 1 item on hand (yet to be sent) it shows I have 0 on hand. 

While this may seem trivial, it causes massive issues with tracking whether an item has been made or not since it was ordered. 

having the “on hand” information is useful, yes, but it being the only editable field is very problematic. 

Yes, on hand should equal the sum of committed + available, but the field we edit to update stock levels should be the available field.

in my above example, if a customer orders an individual item (that isn’t bundled) the numbers show as:

committed: 1

available: -1

on hand: 0

if a customer orders a bundled item it shows

committed: 0

available: -1

on hand: -1

in both scenarios, when I add +1 to on hand to say the item is made, I am left with two results. The first being on-hand:1 and the second being on-hand:0

this whole scenario is due to a workaround because of Shopifys order editing limitation, and now this update nullifies the work around. 

I hope you and the team understand that a change like this can have so many unforeseen effects and should not be rolled out without warning or an option to opt out. 

im extremely disappointed that a product I am paying a lot of money for is constantly working against me. 

[npoulos]

I also just want to add that it makes absolutely no sense that the “on hand” number seems to be the key inventory metric throughout the iOS app. 

The on-hand count is absolutely useless when checking stock amounts. Too bad if a customer calls and asks if I have X in stock and one of my employees says yea there are 5 on hand. (When all 5 are already packed and ready to be sent). 

Was there any actual user research or real-life analysis done for this change. You literally have to jump through hoops to see what is actually available. 

committed stock is no longer mine. It is the customers, they just don’t have it yet. Technically it’s not even on-hand anymore. 

[rhdw1]

Exactly everything you just wrote. 

[streu21]

Hi Shay - this is just a very unnecessary and confusing update. It doesn't seem like much consideration was made for the people actually running stores on Shopify, and feels like change just for the sake of it. You explained how the new update works, but didn't explain why this system is better than the previous one. Hopefully Shopify will consider giving us the option to use the old way instead. 

[Sonderyarnco]

This update just cannot stand. The majority of our business is kit/bundle based and this update is wholly incompatible with the Bundles app and multi-currency sites. PLEASE let us have control over the 'Available' column again. 

[Dawn08]

Shay, There doesn’t seem to be much confusion in this discussion about HOW the update works…the confusion is WHY 😂