Shipping Zones + Inventory Locations for International Orders

Shopify Discussion
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1

Hello!

I need some help figuring out the best way to configure my client’s Shipping and Location settings.

For the past 4 years they have owned their own warehouse and inventory to ship worldwide from Canada. Due to the ongoing tariff situation with the US they have now switched to a dropshipping model for US orders while maintaining their Canadian warehouse for all other international orders.

They now ship about 90% of their US orders from within the US but carry some specialty items that they will still ship from Canada.

I need help to configure both their warehouse locations and shipping zones to accommodate this new model.

Here is a breakdown of what is needed:

Warehouses:
Canadian Warehouse (ships worldwide AND to the USA but only for some items)
USA Warehouse (ships only within the USA)

Example of a customer order to the USA:
1x Blue Sweater (Item is available in both CA and USA Warehouse but will be fullfilled within the USA)
1x Yellow Shorts (Specialty item that can only be shipped from CA Warehouse)

How do I configure this in Shopify? They also need it to correctly reflect if the Blue Sweater is sold out in the US Warehouse but not the Canadian Warehouse for that to reflect on the website to not over-sell.

Any help is much appreciated. TYIA!

2

Set up both US and CA warehouse in Shopify Locations. Set inventory by product by location. Control which zones are eligible with shipping profiles Enable location-based inventory tracking for precise availability. You’ll also have the ability to separately set fulfillment priorities, such as whether US orders should fulfill from your US warehouse first, when stock levels allow. Hope this helps!

3

Thank you so much for this! I am hoping someone can provide a bit more of a tutorial on this.

4

You can try these steps.

Add both warehouses in Shopify Locations.

  1. Assign inventory per product and location (e.g., specialty items only in CA).

  2. Set shipping zones so US warehouse ships only to the US; CA ships worldwide.

  3. Set fulfillment priority so US orders pull from the US warehouse first.

  4. Enable inventory tracking by location for accurate stock levels and availability.

This ensures orders are routed and shown correctly based on stock and warehouse.

5

Hello! Hopping on this… I have the same issue but if I enable Canada warehouse for shipping worldwide, I don’t want my customers to access ALL the inventory from Canada - only limited ones.

Is that possible?

6

Hey @ilystudio,

This setup is actually pretty common, and Shopify can handle it. It just needs to be wired correctly.

The clean way to do it is:

  • Set up Canada warehouse and US warehouse as two separate Locations in Shopify.

  • Track inventory per location for each product.

    • Blue Sweater: stock in both CA + US

    • Yellow Shorts: stock only in CA

  • In Shipping profiles, control where each location can ship:

    • US warehouse → ship to US only

    • CA warehouse → ship to US + international

  • Set fulfillment priority so Shopify tries the US warehouse first for US orders, and only falls back to CA when the item isn’t stocked in the US.

With that in place, your example order works as expected:

  • Blue Sweater fulfills from the US warehouse

  • Yellow Shorts fulfills from the CA warehouse

  • If Blue Sweater is sold out in the US but available in CA, Shopify will still allow purchase and route it correctly, no overselling.

The one thing merchants often forget: make sure “Track inventory at this location” is enabled for every SKU, otherwise Shopify can’t make the right decision.

Once orders are split across locations like this, using ParcelWILL Order Tracking (formerly ParcelPanel Order Tracking) helps a lot on the customer side, it shows multiple shipments clearly and avoids confusion when part of the order ships from the US and part from Canada.

Hope this helps a bit! If it does, feel free to mark it as a solution so others can find it too :slightly_smiling_face: