I have three products in my Shopify store that share the same base (engraved slate designs).
When one of them is sold, I want the inventory of all three products to decrease by 1 automatically.
Example: I sell one piece of Prestige plate:
I initially tried setting this up with Shopify Flow and even let the AI build the workflow, but it only works for one product. I need a setup where all three are linked.
This is workable in Flow, but the three products need one stable link between them; the AI flow probably only grabbed the product that was sold.
Do Prestige, Signature, and Core share a SKU pattern/metafield for the same slate base, or are they just three separate product IDs right now?
They have three different SKUs, so they are three separated products. As I said it worked with the AI Flow but just if Prestige Plate was sold. If Signature or Core was sold then not.
That matches the failure: the generated Flow is anchored to Prestige, so Signature/Core never enter the same path.
Don’t build three SKU branches yet. First give all three products one shared marker, like a product metafield or tag for the slate base; then Flow can check that marker instead of the sold SKU. Can you add one shared metafield/tag to those products, or does this need to work with the current SKUs only?
No of course I can tag them same like “plate” or something like that. problem is I’ve lost the AI Verison of the workflow, it was 2-3 months ago I tried it. so I need a new Version. DO you know how to do?
Interesting use case. Since all three products are essentially drawing from the same physical stock, have you considered managing them through a shared inventory item rather than syncing three separate product inventories?
I’m curious—when you tested Shopify Flow, did it successfully update one of the other products and stop there, or was it unable to identify all three related products dynamically?
I’d love to know what solution you end up using because this seems like a common challenge for stores selling multiple variations that share the same underlying inventory.
Yes. Build it from the order event, not an inventory-change trigger, so the sibling adjustments do not fire the same workflow again.
On the line item, check the shared plate tag; if Prestige sold, reduce Signature and Core by the line item quantity; if Signature sold, reduce Prestige and Core; if Core sold, reduce Prestige and Signature. The sold product is already reduced by Shopify, so the Flow only touches the other two. Are all three variants stocked at one Shopify location, or do you use multiple inventory locations?
No it really worked for one product. to clarify: AI built me 3 flows for each product. And just one Flow worked for one product but it worked so if prestige plate was sold, the inventory of signature and core decrease at 1 dynamically 
None of this sounds good for real world inventory management. You sell one of a particular product, and you want the total inventory to reduce by 3… but you’re only selling 1…
Just because 2 products share the same “base” doesn’t mean they should share the same inventory. I would definitely get off this shared inventory idea. Let’s say you are printing t-shirts, and you only have 1 brand of shirt blank for everything. Based on my understanding of what you are trying to do, this would mean you would need to deduct 1 shirt from every single design, so each sale might deduct dozens of inventory, when that is simply not a true reflection of reality.
A much cleaner version is simple: You have 30 blank slate coasters. 3 designs. You divide them into your designs. 10 inventory each. 30 total. That is based in reality. So when you get low in one, you transfer some of that inventory from elsewhere. Keep it organized. Seperated. The point is you are keeping track of the materials on hand, the variant inventory, and nothing is changing anything else.
The methods you guys are trying to do now seem like they will undoubtedly cause confusion and have multiple consequences. For instance, if all 3 products get reduced in inventory, that will misrepresent actual audit statistics and workflow analysis.
Hi all,
I’ve been following the discussion regarding the shared inventory for the plate designs. While I understand the goal is to keep inventory numbers synced across these products, I strongly advise against setting up a system where a single sale triggers a deduction across multiple, separate product listings.
From a professional e-commerce and Shopify standpoint, this approach will create significant issues for your business as you scale:
Data Integrity & Audits: Your sales reports will reflect inaccurate data (e.g., selling one item will show as three separate sales), making it impossible to perform accurate physical inventory audits or calculate true product performance.
Overselling Risks: If the system is not perfectly synced in real-time, you create “phantom inventory,” which frequently leads to overselling, order cancellations, and poor customer experiences.
Workflow Complexity: Maintaining this logic requires custom code or third-party workarounds that are fragile and likely to break during future store updates.
The industry-standard solution is to keep your inventory source of truth centralized:
Use Variants: If the plates are fundamentally the same physical item, list them as a single product with “Design” as the variant option. Shopify handles the inventory for variants natively, which eliminates the need for any complex syncing logic.
Use a Bundling App: If you must keep them as separate product pages for marketing purposes, use a dedicated Shopify Bundle app (like Shopify Bundles or Simple Bundles). These are designed to map multiple storefront “products” to one single physical SKU/inventory count. When a sale occurs, the app deducts the stock from the central pool automatically.
Moving to one of these methods will ensure your inventory reports stay clean, your audit trails are accurate, and you aren’t risking your store’s reputation on custom code that may fail.
Are you currently using a specific inventory management system, or are you managing these quantities directly in the Shopify admin?
Yeah I got your point but im fine with it. I want Shopify to inform me when I just have for example 10 plates totally left so it’s ok, I will continue to search a solution for this.
@ErayK01 your flow looks correct from what is visible in that screenshot. What do the “Perform the inventoryAdjustQuantites mutation” steps actually do? I assume they are reducing the inventory of the other 2 plates by the line item quantity.
You don’t really need the check for the tag “plates” in this case since you are referencing the products but their IDs. But it won’t hurt as long as the tag is present.
There will be a bit of manual work that may or may not matter to you:
This approach should be workable if you are only syncing these 3 products. If your stores grows and you have more products syncing it might get difficult to manage. At that point you might want to look into apps made to sync the inventory of products with shared components, such as Material Manager.
Flow is probably not the best app for this.
There is a whole bunch of the “inventory sync” apps which will do better then this DIY flow.
Unless you dig deep and watch for a whole bunch of different scenarios.
You’re trying to monitor only inventory decreases, but what if the order is cancelled and inventory of the sold product is increased?
What if you use draft orders and reserve inventory? and then release?
Also you did not say how many sets of products you want synced and how many variants each of them has – this would make the complexity change.
Thank you all for your help! I have the solution (see above) of course this is temporary maybe I’ll switch to an App
Hi @ErayK01,
What you’re describing is a shared-inventory use case where multiple products represent the same physical stock.
In your example, when a Prestige Plate is sold, the inventory of Signature Plate and Core Plate should also decrease automatically because they share the same underlying inventory.
You may want to look at inventory-syncing solutions designed for this use case. For example, Inventory Sync GoGo allows merchants to link products that share the same physical inventory and keeps their stock levels synchronized automatically in real time.
Interesting. I’ve a unisex sweater design that I list separately in the men’s section and then in the women’s sections of my site. They both share the same SKU. If either sells, does the inventory count for both decrease by one?
I’m surprised no one has suggested Bundles. Make each product a bundle which includes the same core component.
yeah the free, shopify native bundles app is perhaps a better solution
