Can we access inventory history beyond 90 days in Shopify?

[Val_Huggett]

Hello,

It has recently come to our attention that the Inventory History only covers the last 90 days.  We frequently use this feature to investigate inventory outages, assess customer buying patterns, and more. 

However, the limit of a 90 day window makes this feature frustratingly useless to us.  We often order product on a seasonal or quarterly basis, which means by the time the next buying window comes around the inventory history is wiped clean. 

I want to know if there is any way to bypass the 90 day window in Shopify's buying history, OR create an equivalent report either in Shopify, in Stocky, or using BetterReports (pinging @KBetterReports  🙂 ).  The key for us is that we need to know the quantity sold per order, NOT total sold in a certain time period. 

[CapeIntergroup1]

crickets is all I hear in here from the powers that be smh.

[CapeIntergroup1]

Has this even been responded to??? I can't believe it's been 3 years and this hasn't been corrected yet.  It seems ridiculous to me that this issue hasn't been resolved.  Does anyone from shopify even read these forums???  What a horrible way to do business.  Time to pull my store off this platform, it's useless!!!!!!!!

[mscmith11]

Hello @Shopify!

[DecorRoom]

@Shopify ?????????

Hear your clients and take action! This is a game-changer for a E-com platform and I cannot for my life understand how not a single person from your organisation has replied in this thread for so long!!!

[mapletattoo]

It is crazy that shopify is not responding to this issue for over 3 years , i can't believe it...

[publicdove]

Adding a bump to the sea of voices.  90 days inventory is not useful, almost a deal breaker.  Hopefully Shopify will consider how important this is to nearly every business model.

[jenninsa]

Still a huge issue. We moved over to shopify from bigcommerce last spring and am regretting it. This is huge problem for rectifying inventory inconsistencies and HUGE problems for reorders as our products are seasonal and we order 6 to 9 months in advance. Can't believe we went through the cost, trouble, and time to move platforms for this.

[mapletattoo]

At this point, I don’t think they even care about us since they became the monopoly of the industry 😞

[mscmith11]

There should be a website dedicated to disclose to merchants PRIOR to switching to Shopify of all the shortfalls of the system.

Actually easy fixes that they pay no attention to, but would have been major deal breakers had we known beforehand.

[DecorRoom]

Pherhaps we all need to make some noice in order for Shopify to hear and rectify this situation, or at least come with a reply from their end on why this is not a priority to fix. How about all of us link to this Topic and ask Shopify on their social channels, in their ads and so on. Pherhaps worth a shot?

[mscmith11]

Something needs to give here. They are essentially hiding information from our own system @Shopify 

[DecorRoom]

Just as an example, posted as a comment on one of their posts on Facebook just now. 

If you scream enough, eventually they will be forced to listen... 

[mscmith11]

Can you add the link to that post from FB?

[DecorRoom]

[HW845]

Replying to boost. I'll echo the other users, this is a foundational aspect of our business and it's unacceptable Shopify doesn't have better capabilities. Our old software is from nearly 20 years ago and offers this as a standard part of the program. This issue is having us second guess Shopify as a whole, and may just cause us to look for a better equipped platform before we even make our first sale.

[Baiju]

Bump....Been using Shopify POS for a few months now, and am pretty suprised at this.

If I had known, I would have looked at other options before investing so much on Shopify.

[CapeIntergroup1]

I agree.  I would've done the same.  The fact that they do absolutely nothing about it and never respond to any of the people asking about it shows their indifference and arrogance towards their customers.  As soon as I find another option we will be moving our companies off this platform.  Customer service is non existent. 

[mscmith11]

AGREE!

[verticallstore]

This is embarrassing,  what the hell Shopify is doing.  This shouldn't be rocket science to do.  At least acknowledging the issue or making a statement about it... is not rocket science.

[mscmith11]

It's not rocket science??

1+2+2....

Seriously Shopify. ADDRESS THIS! 

[heatheredboho]

We are having the same issue. 

[mscmith11]

Why has @Shopify not responded to this? With the amount of money ecommerce customers pay to use the Shopify platform, this is basic theft of our product and inventory information. 

The data is all there, so why is Shopify hiding anything past 90 days??? Please address this.

[orkman]

I recently had a frustrating support chat with Shopify on this very topic, where I tried to get them to give me the history of a particular product's inventory from older than 90 days. After a lot of replies, here was the outcome:

-----

We understand your perspective and the significance of having extended access or visibility to logs for information retrieval when necessary. Currently, our platform has a limitation where data can only be retained for 14 days to allow our servers to accommodate new data.

-----

So, not even Shopify themselves could give me further detail about a product's history! It sounds to me like this is a fundamental limitation of their system, and not simply something they're preventing us—or third-party reporting apps—from accessing. Apparently, they're now going to add my enquiry to their "list of feature requests", blah, blah, blah.

I, along with the rest of you on here, am amazed at this limitation, and feel incredibly disappointed that Shopify haven't officially acknowledged this and responded to this thread.

[mscmith11]

Data is clearly stored beyond 14 days, that's absolutely the most ridiculous statement ever written by Shopify if that is what one of their customer service representatives told you LOL. That would mean that no order data, customer data or any other pertinent historical data would be held. That's 100% incorrect. All of Shopify's data is held on backend SQL databases and servers. There are lots and lots of 3rd party apps that will support historical inventory data, but you guessed it, you must pay for this additional subscription and even then, how is the information obtained through the portal, is it logged under the individual product variants; I read some reviews and it seemed very much problematic.

At the end of the day, Shopify has overlooked this aspect. Maybe they should take a lesson from Lightspeed that prioritizes and knows the importance of inventory and access to all changes that are associated to each and every item. When deciding on an ecommerce platform I would never have thought that a program would disregard the importance of this as much as @Shopify has. 

[DailyNightly87]

Managed to get an inside look at Shopify's Servers

[DailyNightly87]

That data is 100% still there. For example, a customer buys a product - this history of that purchase will be available under that product for 90 days. Once the 90 days is up, the history associated with said product may not show the history anymore, but I can still find the sale under the customer's name, and well past 90 days on top of that. The problem is, the information isn't being shown in a convenient place. I should be able to look at an item and have the system display every customer that bought that item and in what quantities be it 90 days or 90 years ago. This isn't anything the requires a massive server for information retention - this is merely text people. C'mon. I can play Call Of Duty games that are over a decade old still, with all my play stats and records instantly available from a game I haven't touched since 2010. This isn't Call Of Duty, but like...do better?

[mscmith11]

You really nailed it and that is exactly right. Data is all there. They know it and we know it.

Either just another way to make $$ off 3rd party apps (who frankly--why do I want like 55,  3rd party companies all having access to my data!) or just @Shopify  isn't making this a priority. I don't know who these backend "developers" are, but a few weeks ago, I cancelled an uncaptured order and the order for some reason did not cancel the freight cost, so it is still sitting in my orders with a value. Fast forward 3.5 weeks later and having it escalated and Shopify tells me "they are still working on it".  If you cannot fix your own problems created by your own program, this is a huge issue! Here's my open ticket # @Shopify #46899253!

[orkman]

I've seen a few people implying that this data can be accessed through 3rd party apps, but that's not my experience. We work with a backup app called Rewind and their support team have told me that inventory history can't be captured in their app as Shopify don't allow it. Believe me, I would gladly pay for an app that could give me this history, since Shopify seem so incapable of addressing the issue, but I don't think it's something allowed through their API.

[MarcoM0857]

You are correct! We use the App Data Export, very useful for many reports, and always willing to create custom reports to fit our needs, but when asked about extending the 90 History we got this response: The Shopify API does not provide us with past inventory data, it will provide only current inventory in the reports. so we are unable to show the past inventory in the reports.

So there is no hope until @Shopify  come to their senses... ☹️

[mscmith11]

Even this similar discussion:

https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-apps/shopify-flow-app-track-inventory-adjustment-history-for...

mentions the same issue with the Shopify API issue:

For our internal warehouse controlling we need the data from the "Adjustment history" for each SKU/Variant.

Unfortunately, Shopify is not providing any API or report to get this data via export. Hence, if you wanted this data you needed to copy and paste the data by hand  @Jules81 

** @Shopify that is the real question. WHYYYYY are you not providing said API??? Please respond on this issue. 

!

[mscmith11]

We should consider linking this discussion to their FB page again.

[mscmith11]

 I urge merchants to also reply on this FB post regarding this inventory issue:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1ZKk7ibLDA5Fcjh2/?mibextid=WC7FNe

[mscmith11]

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1ZKk7ibLDA5Fcjh2/?mibextid=WC7FNe

[markussmueller]

@Shopify Please expand the window to keep the history forever. We are helping a client that is selling wine and the legal requirement is to keep these details forever. This should be simple enough to expand.

[Dirk]

Hey, @markussmueller Thank you for the suggestion. I'd be happy to pass this feedback along to our development team for potential future consideration. Your input is invaluable in helping us improve and deliver a better platform. 

If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

[markussmueller]

Thank you Dirk 🙂

[Dirk]

Anytime! 

[orkman]

Hi Dirk (via @Shopify), this thread was started in November 2020 and has had almost 12K views. I assume you have access to all comments on the thread, so it's somewhat surprising—and more than a little disappointing—to read that you're only now going to pass along this request to your development team. What we're all asking for here is not rocket science, and is something that should have been present in Shopify from the beginning. We simply want to see all our Inventory History. The present limitation of 90 days is ludicrous and is of virtually no use whatsoever. We've been forced to utilise a third-party app to auto-export our inventory every few weeks, just so we have some record of what is going on, but this is far from ideal.

For anyone else reading this, we're a Shopify Plus customer and there is no improvement with inventory history on that plan. It's 90 days and no more.

[markussmueller]

Hello Orkman

May I ask which app you are using for the export? 🙂 Does it allow you to save events that cause changes in inventory, such as orders, theft, loss, breakage, etc.?

Thank you in advance and have a great week!

[orkman]

I'm afraid not, @markussmueller. We're using an app called Matrixify for a variety of import/export jobs. I simply have a schedule set up every two weeks to export a snapshot of our products, including each product's inventory level at each of our retail locations. This gives me nothing more than a number. Since I'm doing it regularly, I can at least see what happened with a product count 3+ months ago, but it doesn't give me anything more than that. Certainly no adjustment history, like Shopify provides for the last 90 days.

[markussmueller]

Thank you for taking the time to reply! Yeah, that is the best solution I was able to achieve so far too. Hopefully Shopify will get to this rather sooner than later 🙏 @Shopify

[Ieva]

Hi @orkman , @markussmueller ! 

Ieva here from Matrixify. 

Great use of the app @orkman ! It is a great workaround for this Shopify limitation. I have made sure to add this to our Customer Needs list though, so that if Shopify does make it possible for apps to access this information via the API, then Matrixify can develop a feature to support this and we can let you know if we do! 

@markussmueller , if you need any help setting up something similar to what @orkman has set up with Matrixify, please do not hesitate to reach out to our support, we'd be happy to help! 

[MarcoM0857]

AMAZING! Finally Shopify replied!

It must be a miracle as it never happened since November 2020 and 12K views as correctly indicated by @orkman.  Ah, Wait! Dirk will "pass the feedback along to the development team for potential future..." GOOD LUCK my friends!

Frankly, this is a major issue for most users. I don't understand why a great company like Shopify hasn't addressed this shortcoming swiftly. Hello development team! Are you there?

[mscmith11]

AGREED.

[Danae_Horst]

No offense to you personally, Dirk, I'm sure you're great and I know you're just doing your job, but based on my experience with every (seemingly basic, present in every other POS and e-comm platform I've used) feature request I've made to Shopify in the last 7 years, this meme is all I can think of every time someone from the Shopify team says they're passing the feedback along. 

[DailyNightly87]

Poor Dirk - this guys is about to get flamed so bad. Please remember to be kind, he didn't cause this.

Dirk - you are the real G, and the first official-ish Shopify person to take note of this. Please help us. We know you can do this.

We all believe in you Dirk.

[mscmith11]

Hi Dirk,

Wow, only 4 years later a response of "I'd be happy to pass this feedback along to our development team for potential future consideration. Your input is invaluable in helping us improve and deliver a better platform".

Is our feedback actually valuable??? As I noted before, I don't know of any other POS system that disallows a user to view an inventory product's history from START to FINISH. As a retailer for 24 years, I can tell you that this causes us issues EVERYDAY. Not every other day, but EVERY DAY. Had we known this prior to switching, we most likely would not have done so. This may be the most important factor for a retailer and for Shopify to dismiss this is a slap in the face. Again @Shopify keeps all order data history, and in turn is linked to the product sales history.  The information is all there, why would they keep that from their customers??? Makes zero sense.

[mscmith11]

Also Dirk, please respond to this client who is now facing legality issues because they are unable to provide inventory history beyond 90 days:

https://community.shopify.com/c/fulfillment-and-inventory/ability-to-run-a-report-that-shows-all-inv...

[DecorRoom]

Is this a frkn joke? Some kind of april fool? We have been in this thread För more than 3 years, thousands of views and all you can say is you will pass this along? Excuse us @Dirk!? But you better get your dev team on the clock to correct this major issue/BUG you have in your ecom platform asap! Not pass something along. This is humiliating to all shopify clients that you does not address this more seriously!!!

[mscmith11]

It's actually humorous at this point that they have disregarded the merchants like this. I honestly do not think I would have switched to Shopify had I known this previously. Inventory history is just that important for us, as I am sure it is for most retailers!