Can we access inventory history beyond 90 days in Shopify?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Shopify’s inventory history limitation has sparked significant frustration among merchants. The platform initially restricted inventory adjustment history to just 90 days, which users found inadequate for seasonal ordering, inventory audits, and investigating discrepancies.

Core Issues:

  • Merchants need per-order quantity details, not just aggregate totals
  • Seasonal businesses order 6-9 months in advance, making 90-day history useless
  • No API access exists for historical inventory data
  • Third-party apps cannot retrieve data beyond Shopify’s imposed limits

User Impact:

  • Unable to audit inventory discrepancies from previous quarters
  • Forced to maintain manual records (printed packing slips, email archives)
  • Some merchants considering switching to competitors like Lightspeed
  • Security concerns raised about untracked inventory adjustments after the retention period

Shopify’s Response:
After 4+ years and nearly 12K thread views, Shopify doubled the history window from 90 to 180 days. However, users remain dissatisfied, requesting 3-5 years of history or unlimited retention from product creation date.

Workarounds:

  • Third-party app “Inventory History Guardian” created to address this gap
  • Manual exports using tools like Matrixify
  • Custom reports through Shopify Analytics (requires technical knowledge)

Current Status: Discussion remains open with users demanding further improvements and better inventory security controls.

Summarized with AI on October 28. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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Hi Mariaacle @Shopify_77 , this is good news.

So, now my next obvious question is, we know 90 is possible and 180 is possible, so why not 360 days? Why is this information limited at all?

As we have all mentioned many times, the actual transactions and/or orders linked to these products do not “expire in displaying”, so why then is Shopify restricting information that is held on the server and obviously very accesible, from us the customers, on the product variant pages?

From a retail owners POV, this seems like an intentional process that Shopify is keeping from us. Our inventory adjustments NEED to be shown from the inception/creation of the product fully. If you cannot see the adjustments from Day 1 to the day we make it inactive then I am sorry to say that 180 days doesn’t make alot of difference. We have products that we have had for sometimes 5-10 years, so unfortunately another 3 months of data is a step in the right direction, but not the solution to this problem. I will also make mention again of the business who commented on an govt audit and they were not able to produce documentation on their own inventory’s inventory adjustments throughout the years. I urge @Shopify_77 to take legal issues like this into account as it is of the utmost importance.

Thank you and we all appreciate attention to this matter. I can be reached directly should more input be required on a retail perspective :slightly_smiling_face:

-Michelle

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