Shopify inventory management

What Shopify gives you

Shopify’s help center says you can manage inventory quantities, transfers and purchase orders directly from the Shopify admin. In practice that covers:

• Locations. Locations are where you store and fulfill inventory, and you need at least one to track inventory.
• Quantities and history. You can change quantities when stock changes, and Shopify records every adjustment so you can see when and why a quantity changed.
• Stock counts. You can run a count to compare your records with physical stock.
• Transfers. You can move inventory between locations.
• Purchase orders. You can create purchase orders with suppliers. Shopify’s current pages say you create a linked inventory transfer from an ordered purchase order and receive the items on that transfer.
• Low-stock alerts. Shopify’s Stocky transition page says low-stock alerts are available through Shopify Flow.

For one store with a handful of locations, that is a real foundation. It tracks and records stock. It doesn’t decide what to buy.

What happened to Stocky

Stocky was a Shopify inventory planning app, used for purchase orders, stock counts and reorder suggestions.

• 2 February 2026: Stocky was delisted from the Shopify App Store.
• 31 August 2026: Stocky became unavailable, and its APIs stopped working.
• After that date: merchants keep read-only access for at least 90 days to export their data.

If you used it, there are a few things to know from Shopify’s own transition guide:

• Historical purchase orders can’t be imported into Shopify, and suppliers can’t be exported from Stocky, so you recreate them.
• Weighted-average costing and landed-cost allocation aren’t native to Shopify’s inventory tools.
• Min/max levels aren’t built in.
• You can’t email purchase orders from Shopify, merge them, or turn customer orders into purchase orders.
• Purchase order APIs aren’t generally available.
• Shopify says some Stocky-specific features might work differently or might not yet be available.

Check the transition guide for the current list, because Shopify updates it.

Where built-in inventory stops

These are common gaps for growing brands. They aren’t failures in Shopify, but jobs the built-in tools don’t claim to do.

• Deciding what to buy. Shopify records stock and orders. Working out the right quantity needs sales speed, lead times, seasonality and stock on order. See inventory forecasting and replenishment methods.
• Other channels. Stock sold on Amazon, at wholesale or from a 3PL needs to be counted somewhere. See ecommerce inventory management.
• Bundles by location. Shopify says bundles don’t track inventory by location. A bundle’s availability comes from its components, and a component is left out of the calculation if its inventory isn’t tracked or it is set to continue selling when out of stock.
• Real lead times. Shopify doesn’t work out how long your suppliers really take. You can measure it yourself with the lead time calculator.

Checking your setup

1. Turn on tracking for every product you count, and decide what happens when it’s out of stock.
2. Set up locations for each warehouse, store and 3PL you hold stock in.
3. Count and adjust with a schedule, so the record stays close to the shelf.
4. Use purchase orders for every supplier order, so you can see stock on order.
5. Measure lead times from those orders.
6. Set reorder rules with the reorder point calculator.

If you’re comparing tools, read our ecommerce inventory software buyer’s guide.

Where Kerno fits

Kerno Forecast is in early access, built for brands selling on Shopify and Amazon. It works out what to reorder from sales speed, stock on hand, stock on order and real lead times, and drafts purchase orders per supplier that you review and send.

Shopify details on this page come from help.shopify.com and were last checked on the review date above.