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.

[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”

[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]

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

[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?

[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

[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.

[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.