How to track "Stock" inventory differently than "On-Hand" inventory

Shopify Discussion
1

Hello,

I am new to inventory tracking for my Shopify store.

Setting it up, I am unable to find out how to track the inventory for my backroom shelves without adding them “In Stock”

For example,

I have 10 Tee Shirts in my stock room.

I want to hold 2, in case there is a shipping issue, so I want the on-hand inventory to be 8.

So I can add 8 in stock, but I need to know I have 10 total.

I was thinking I need a separate Inventory tracking system that would keep track of my Stock Levels and then port in only the numbers I want to sell. If thats the case, does anyone have a good system.

Or, am I totally missing something here.

Thanks for the help!

2

Hi there,

In Shopify, you can track your inventory levels by using the “Stock” field. When you add a product to your inventory, you can set the stock level to the total number of items you have in your stock room, which in your case would be 10.

To hold 2 items back, you can use the “Reserved” field in Shopify. This field allows you to set aside a certain number of items that are not available for sale. In your case, you can set the “Reserved” field to 2, which would indicate that you have 10 items in total, but only 8 are available for sale.

To do this, go to the product page in your Shopify admin and scroll down to the “Inventory” section. Under “Stock”, enter 10, and under “Reserved”, enter 2. This will ensure that you have 10 items in total, but only 8 are available for sale.

If you want to use a separate inventory tracking system, you can do so by using a third-party app or integration. There are many inventory management apps available in the Shopify App Store, such as TradeGecko, Stitch Labs, and Skubana, that can help you manage your inventory levels and sync them with your Shopify store.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

1 Like
3

Hello Joseph,

It’s great that you’re looking to set up inventory tracking for your Shopify store. To address your concern, you can set up your inventory using Shopify’s “Location” feature. This feature allows you to track inventory across multiple locations, including your backroom shelves. Here’s how you can set it up:

  1. Go to your Shopify admin panel and click on “Settings,” then “Locations.”

  2. Click on “Add Location” and enter the name of your backroom location.

  3. Under “Inventory managed at this location,” select “Yes” and enter the initial stock quantity for this location (in your case, 10).

  4. Under “Fulfillment service,” select “Manual” to indicate that you’ll be fulfilling orders yourself.

  5. Click “Save.”

Now, when you add products to your store, you can set the inventory quantity for each product based on the total number of items you have in all locations combined. For example, for your t-shirts, you can set the inventory quantity to 10, and Shopify will automatically deduct the number of items sold from the appropriate location.

If you want to hold 2 t-shirts in your backroom shelves, you can adjust the inventory quantity for that location by going to “Settings,” then “Locations,” then clicking on your backroom location. Under “Inventory,” you can adjust the stock quantity to 8.

Regards

Olivia devid

4

Thank you for the reply. This was my backup plan if I didn’t find anything better. But, after reading your explanation, its a better solution than I was originally thinking. There are definitely some drawbacks, but it is simple and built into Shopify.

Thanks for the help!