A merchant operates separate Shopify stores in the USA and Australia but faces a critical inventory problem: customers can purchase items that are out of stock in their local store if inventory exists in the other location. The ‘Multi-Location Inventory Info’ app failed to resolve this issue.
Proposed Solutions:
Theme code customization: Modify the store’s theme to display “sold out” instead of “add to cart” when inventory is unavailable at a specific location. This can include geolocation detection to show location-specific stock messages.
Technical limitations: Shopify’s Liquid templating language can only access collective inventory data, not location-specific quantities. Accessing granular location data requires either custom API integration or third-party apps.
App recommendations:
Product Automator (mentioned as having a beta feature for location-based inventory API calls)
Multiloca: Location Stock Info (filters inventory based on user geolocation via Google Maps or MaxMind)
Implementation approach: Combine geolocation APIs with custom JavaScript to detect user location, then conditionally display inventory. Most solutions require either hiring a Shopify developer or using specialized apps, as native Liquid code alone cannot achieve this functionality.
Summarized with AI on November 3.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Hello Shopify community! I’m currently operating two stores, one in the USA and the other in Australia. I’ve been facing challenges in managing location-specific inventory, as customers are able to purchase products that are out of stock in the USA store if they are available in the Australia store. I tried the ‘Multi-Location Inventory Info’ app, but it hasn’t solved the issue. Does anyone have recommendations for apps or solutions that can accurately handle multi-location inventory and prevent sales when a product is out of stock in a specific location? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
To prevent sales, you would probably want to edit your theme code, so that if inventory is not available at a certain location, show sold out rather than add to cart. If you’re wanting to do it by location of the user, you may need to install an app to detect the geolocation of the person, though these aren’t always accurate.
Another idea, you could edit your theme code to show when an item is out of stock at a location. For example if USA location is out of stock, show text in red “this item is out of stock in the US, if you’re browsing from [countries that your US warehouse ships to] please contact us to see when it’s back in stock”.
If you have a developer you work with, just tell them what you want to achieve and they can make it happen. If you’re wanting to do this yourself, here are some documents to help you get started:
Been awhile since I wrote that, I’m not sure but I looked at the docs and with Liquid it seems you can currently only gather inventory collectively, not at a certain location (inventory_quantity here for example: https://shopify.dev/docs/api/liquid/objects/variant)..)
I believe using an app is the only way to get that granular data, unless there’s a way to do it with the ajax cart API, though I haven’t used that in a couple years so I’m not sure.
Since writing here a year ago though, my company launched a new app called Product Automator, that can solve that by allowing an API call to the app from inside the theme to retrieve inventory at different locations using the back end Shopify API, and then perform a conditional action (show message, disable add to cart, etc).
That feature is due for beta testing next week, if you’re not able to find a solution from pure theme code and want to try it out, send a message here with the details of what you want it to do for you: productautomator.com/contact.
You’re looking for a way to filter inventory based on location, particularly for specific countries.
While Liquid has limitations in accessing location-specific inventory, you can combine it with JavaScript to determine the user’s location. By using a geolocation API (Google Map or Geolocation by MaxMind), you can get the user’s country and then conditionally display inventory based on that data. This requires some custom coding but you can get Shopify partner to that for you.
If you’re open to exploring another existing solution, apps like Multiloca: Location Stock Info can filter locations based on users’ geolocation, helping manage product visibility based on inventory at various locations. It requires google map or maxmind to get country of the user.
If you could share more about your specific requirements, I’d be glad to offer more suggestions or help with technical details!