Managing inventory

It is important to keep your inventory accurate and track the quantity of each product in your store. Accurate inventory allows you to avoid selling more products than you actually have and helps you replenish your stock before you run out.

You can specify stock quantity for every product in your store, and it will automatically be reduced once a product is ordered. When the quantity of a certain product reaches zero, this product will receive a Sold Out label and become unavailable for purchase unless you enable pre-orders for it. You can also choose to receive an email notification when a product quantity gets low, so you have time to restock.

Enabling stock tracking for products

When you add new products to your store, they have an unlimited quantity by default. To enable stock tracking for a product, you should specify how many units of this product you have in stock.

When customers place orders for a product (and the order payment status is either Awaiting Payment or Paid), the product’s stock gets automatically reduced by the number of units ordered. Once that product’s stock reaches zero, it is labeled as “Out of stock” in your store admin. As for the storefront, you can choose one of the following out of stock behavior options for each product:

• Mark the product as “Sold Out” and hide it from your storefront so that customers don’t browse into it. The product will be unavailable for purchase.
• Mark the product as “Out of stock”/“Sold Out” and show it on your storefront. The product will be unavailable for purchase, but customers will know that you sell it.
• Make the sold out product available for pre-orders.

Learn more about the basics of inventory tracking in your store →

To set quantity in stock for a product:

You can also track the stock levels of a product by its options like color and size (example: a Yellow XL) as well as accept pre-orders for them. For that, you will need to create variations for your available product options and specify the SKU, stock quantity, and out of stock behavior for each variation. Learn more about managing stock of product options →

Setting up low-stock alerts

To know when it’s time to replenish a product’s stock, you can opt into receiving an automated message from your store informing you that a product’s stock has reached a certain limit.

Simply enter the low stock value at which you would like to receive a notification, and the store will automatically send you an email when your product reaches this limit.

To specify product quantity for low-stock alerts:

The low stock notifications will be sent to the email address that you specified in Settings → Notifications, in the Admin email addresses block. You can specify another email there or add several email addresses (e.g., yours and an email address of a person who manages your inventory). Please note that this address is used for all your admin notifications, and not only for the “Low stock” notification.

When you receive a low stock notice in your inbox, you can click the Re-stock product button to quickly reach that product’s editing page and update the stock quantity once it’s been replenished.

To stop receiving emails about low product stock, you can disable the Low stock notification in your store admin, in the Settings → Notifications page (this setting affects all products). To remove low stock notifications for just a certain product, go to that product’s page, select the stock control block, and set a zero value in the “Send me a note when the quantity in stock reaches” section. This way, the notification will be sent only when the product becomes out of stock in your store.

Displaying stock status and quantity on the storefront

On product pages in your store, you can display the “in stock” status, products’ actual in-stock quantity, and a quantity field that allows customers to enter how many units of an item they want to add to cart.

Displaying the "In stock" label and product quantity

By default, the “In stock” label is displayed for all the products in your store: for the ones with unlimited stock and for the ones with enabled stock control. If you’re using stock control, your product pages can also show information about the current stock levels.

You can hide this information from the product pages if you want (for example, if you sell services).

To show/hide the “In stock” label and quantity:

1. From your store admin, go to Design.
2. Scroll down to the Sidebar section and find the "Add to Bag" button menu:
   

   

3. Check or uncheck the box next to Stock availability labels (and next to Number of items in stock if you also wish to show/hide that information).

Displaying a quantity field on product pages

If your customers tend to order many units of the same product, or you offer quantity discounts, you can add a quantity box to your product pages.

To show/hide the quantity field:

1. From your store admin, go to Design.
2. Scroll down to the Sidebar section.
3. Find the “Add to Bag” button menu.
4. Check or uncheck the box next to Product quantity:
   

   

Setting default behavior for out of stock products

There are three possible options for how your products can be treated when their quantity reaches zero. They can remain displayed on the storefront, be hidden from it, or they can become available for pre-orders. You can choose one of these out of stock behavior options while enabling stock tracking for individual products.

By default, all the new products that you create in your store are set to remain displayed on the storefront when sold out. Their quantity is marked as “Out of stock”/“Sold Out” and the “Buy Now” and “Add to Bag” buttons for these products become hidden so that they can’t be ordered:

You can change this default setting and specify which behavior should be selected for all the new products in your store when they become out of stock. This way, you can save time on individual product setup.

To set default behavior for all out of stock products in your store:

1. From your store admin, go to Settings → General → Cart & Checkout.
2. From the Default out of stock products behavior dropdown, choose your option: Show on storefront, Hide from storefront, or Show and allow pre–order.
3. Save the changes.

That’s it! Now when you create a new product and specify its quantity in stock, the value in the When out of stock dropdown on the product page in your store admin will be set to the one that you’ve selected on the Cart & Checkout page. You can change it for individual products if you want.

To change out of stock behavior for several products in your store in bulk, go to Catalog → Products → Mass Update → Update Stock → Set Out of Stock Behavior and choose your option in the popup. You can also use our Bulk Product Editor for that.

Understanding stock changes in your store

If you are using stock control, the stock for products and product variations is changed according to the following rules:

• If a customer adds products or product variations to cart in your online store and checks out, their stock is reduced by the number of items ordered. A customer cannot order an item if its quantity has already reached “0” (unless pre-orders are enabled for this product or product variation).
  When an order for a product is placed in your store, that order’s payment status becomes either Awaiting Payment or Paid. If later you change the payment status for an order to Cancelled or Refunded, the quantity of the products from that order will be automatically returned to their stock. For example, if you have 8 units of a product in stock and then cancel an existing order for 2 units, you will have 10 units in stock.
  Note that if you mark an order as Partially refunded, the stock of the purchased products in your store will not change.
• If you create an order on behalf of a customer, product stock is reduced.
  If your manual order includes an out-of-stock product or a product quantity that exceeds your stock, that product's stock will become negative in your store. For example, product quantity was equal to “1” and you manually placed an order for 3 units of it, as the result the product stock becomes equal to “-2”. In case pre-orders are enabled for this product, the stock will be equal to “0”, and 2 units will be considered to be pre-ordered.
• If you place an order for a product from an abandoned cart, its stock is reduced.
  If the order features a product that has become out-of-stock in your store by the moment you place the order for an abandoned cart, or if the quantity in stock is lower than the quantity in the order, the stock will become negative. In this case, you will see a special “Oversold by” notice when placing an order. If pre-orders are enabled for this product, its stock will be set equal to “0”, and a corresponding number of units will be considered to be pre-ordered.

Please note that if you edit the product quantity for existing orders, the change won't affect the in-stock quantity for these items in your store. You will need to take care of the stock changes yourself (e.g., update the stock manually or provide additional items, if needed).

Updating product stock levels in bulk

You can always update the stock of individual products on their pages in Catalog → Products. In case you want to update the stock of your products or their variations in bulk, you can use the following options:

• You can instantly apply stock updates to several products at once using the Mass Update option. For that, go to Catalog → Products, tick all the products you want to update, then click Mass Update → Update Stock → Update Stock for Selected and enter new quantity.
• You can quickly update the stock of products and/or their variations using the Bulk Product Editor tool:
  

  

• You can use the built-in import tool to update the stock quantity of products and product variations with a CSV file. See a case study about updating product stock with import →

Viewing your inventory

You can use several options to view the current stock of products and product variations in your store:

• First, you can always check the stock of a product on its page in Catalog → Products (in the Options → Variations tab, if the product has variations).
• Second, you can control the stock of your products and product variations using Bulk Product Editor. As the Bulk Product Editor allows you to view multiple products and their stock all at once, you can also use this page to check inventory. Just choose the products you need (or select all the items in your store) for editing in Catalog → Products, enter the Bulk Product Editor and scroll the table down to see whether you need to refill the stock.

You can also use the Out of Stock filter on the Catalog → Products page in your store admin to get the list of out-of-stock products. This filter displays all the products that are currently out of stock: