Glossary
Location
Also called: Shopify location
A location is a place Shopify holds stock, such as a shop, a stockroom, a warehouse or a third party who ships for you.
Every stock number in Shopify belongs to one. There is no such thing as a quantity without a location behind it.
What counts as one
- The shop floor
- The stockroom behind it, if you count it separately
- A warehouse
- A 3PL or other fulfillment service
Split them when you would count them separately. A shop and its stockroom in one building are usually one location, because nobody counts them apart.
The priority order
Shopify keeps a list of locations in order, and an online order is assigned to the first one that can fill it. Getting that order wrong sends every order to the shop and leaves the warehouse idle.
Check it after adding any location. The new one lands at the bottom, which is rarely where it belongs.
Where it goes wrong
Stock is received into the wrong location. The total is right, the shelf it is on is wrong, and the picker in the other building is told to ship something forty miles away. Booking in against the right location is the first thing a receiving app should ask you, and the wider method is in how to receive a purchase order in Shopify.
The other one is deactivating a location with stock still on it. Shopify makes you move the quantities first, and the temptation is to zero them instead. That is a write-off, not a move, and your stock accuracy pays for it.
Related terms
Multi-location inventory
Multi-location inventory means Shopify holds a separate stock number for every location, and no single total behind them.
Inventory item
An inventory item is the countable half of a variant. Stock levels attach to it, one per location, not to the variant itself.
Fulfillment
Also called: Fulfilment
Fulfillment is the step where you tell Shopify an order has been picked, packed and sent, which closes it and releases the stock.