Exclusive AMA: Optimizing your Inventory Management with Shopify Experts!

Topic summary

This AMA focused on Shopify inventory management challenges ahead of Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM). The Shopify Product and Marketing team answered merchant questions during a live two-hour text session.

Most Pressing Issue:
Multiple merchants raised the 90-day inventory adjustment history limit as a critical problem. Users emphasized this restriction prevents proper historical tracking, auditing, and analysis—particularly problematic for established businesses needing long-term data. The team acknowledged receiving this feedback but provided no timeline for extending the limit.

Key Topics Discussed:

  • Tracking external payments: For Venmo/PayPal/Zelle transactions, solutions include manual order entry, third-party apps, or custom integrations
  • Purchase order features: Requests for auto-populating POs at minimum thresholds and printing barcode labels directly from PO pages
  • Bundle/kit inventory: Multiple merchants asked about tracking component inventory when selling product bundles (no native solution provided)
  • Incoming inventory visibility: Users want to track ordered stock before it arrives
  • Multi-location inventory views: Request for consolidated dashboard showing all locations simultaneously
  • Preorder management: Guidance provided on using preorder apps to separate regular and advance orders

Reporting Gaps:
Merchants requested ABC analysis beyond 28 days, product-level (vs. variant-level) views, and zero-movement reports.

The session revealed significant gaps between merchant needs and current platform capabilities, particularly around historical data access and advanced inventory features.

Summarized with AI on November 2. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.

I’m no expert but I run a busy business with Shopify. I use the “Tags” for a purpose like this and enter a date like 202402910 for today. I can then run reports on products by filtering this date data tag. I use this to keep track of price updates, so I can identify when a specific product pricing was last checked and updated. I think this is a clumsy way of doing it for you but a solution none the less.