Why does inventory keep changing after editing on Shopify?

[DailyNightly87]

We've been using Shopify for a few years now, and I've noticed an issue with inventory often being incorrect despite multiple edits. I'll give an example:

Our staff, myself included will do a full inventory count on a line of products. During the count, we change the numbers based on what we have physically here in front of us. Obviously, things happen and over the weeks and months it is normal for the numbers to be off. Repeatedly, even after we zero something out, I've noticed inventory creeping back in, almost like the changes we make are not saving correctly. I realize human error happens, and I've made my own share of mistakes, but its gone from me questioning what I've done to watching staff change something to zero three or four times, only to have the quantities change back to 1. The problem with this is the item will pop back up on our website, and someone will purchase it, only for us to have to phone the customer and let them know it's not actually in stock, which is always disappointing. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what products this happens to, although I tend to notice it more in items that have variants. Case in point, something we were counting the other day was off. I had all three staff members on at the time watch me zero the item out so I knew I wasn't going crazy, and then sure enough, over the weekend someone was able to purchase one because it had gone back in stock and back online. 

Has anyone else noticed a similar issue?

[NicolaHomefront]

Having these issues too, makes it a nightmare to sell online and also ordering stock. Do you use 'stocky' for your inventory tracking or another app. I have used both stocky to zero out for stocktaking and also checked quantities by scanning on shopify inventory as I wanted to investigate if it was a syncing issue with 'stocky'. I’m still none the wiser as inventory is incorrect again. Another huge issue I have with online store …..We have six locations who offer local pickup, that’s fine if the inventory is correct but as I’ve said it regularly isn’t. We have one location that offers delivery but because the others offer local pickup if an item is out of stock for delivery it will pull the inventory from any location that has it in stock and sell online for delivery. Which then means creating a transfer from the second location, moving the stock to the delivery location so it can be picked up by our courier service. Absolute nightmare. We want to offer both local pickup and home delivery but seemingly these can’t run independently of each other. I’m wondering constantly is shopify fit for purpose 

[DailyNightly87]

Thanks for sharing, that is interesting to hear. We also use Stocky for inventory management reasons, I believe mostly to keep things that have sold out from still showing up online. We're only one location with one store, and we migrated over from another Inventory Management system. Human error is indeed a factor, we've all miscounted - that's understandable. But since I originally made my post I have noticed more and more manual inventory changes we make not saving correctly, or an old product we have been sold out of for literal years suddenly being able to be ordered by customers through our website because somehow it snuck back into inventory on its own.

[ShopNina]

We have a similar issue. Shopify does random updates on products, often old and sold out in quantities, and all of a sudden there are quantities of products that we don't have anymore. Contacted Shopify, and according to them we have just forgotten that these quantities are there as they can't see any activity in the adjustment history (which also is ridiculously short 90 days).

Knowing our stock throughout, I know it's not us, but the system glitching somehow. Any ideas how we could stop Shopify updating stock that doesn't need updating, or is this one of those things we are in their mercy once again? With 4 locations we simply cannot be doing inventory takes and updating stock manually all the time (and even if we did, this exact same thing you described would still keep happening).