Sync Inventory of variants between different products

Retired Boards Appdev Fulfillment Api
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Topic summary

A merchant sells print-on-demand t-shirts with ~100 different designs, each offered in 2 colors and 8 sizes (1,600 total SKU combinations). However, they only stock 16 base blank shirts.

Core Issue:

Inventory isn’t syncing across products. When 5 white M-size shirts sell under Design A, the system correctly reduces that SKU from 50 to 45. But the white M variant for all other designs (B, C, etc.) still shows 50 in stock instead of updating to 45.

What’s Needed:

A way to sync inventory counts for specific variants (e.g., “white, size M”) across different products, so all designs reflect the same shared blank shirt inventory.

The merchant couldn’t find built-in Shopify functionality for this and is seeking free or low-cost solutions given limited revenue. Another user has asked if a resolution was found, but no solution has been shared yet.

Summarized with AI on November 13. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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I want to sell t-shirts with different designs that I print on demand myself. Im looking for a solution to track my inventory of blank t-shirts and accurately reflect it on my store page for each design.

I have about 100 designs set up as individual products in Shopify. Customers can choose between black and white shirts in 8 sizes each. I have set this up as variations on the product. So in total I have only 16 different base shirs in stock, but 1600 possible combinations and SKUs.

The Problem:

Say I have 50 blank shirts (white, size M) in stock.

When I sell 5 shirts with design A (white, size M) the stock of this specific SKU goes down to 45 as expected.

However now I only have 45 blank shirts (white, size M) left in stock, so the variation (white shirt, size M) of all the other designs als needs to go down to 45.

Essentially I need to sync the stock of specific variations across different products.

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I couldn’t find a way to do this with Shopify’s built in functionality. Unfortunately I don’t really know what to search for, so I’m sorry if this is a duplicate question.

Since I don’t make a lot of revenue, are there any free or low cost solutions to this problem?

1 Like
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DId you find a resolution?