Running a Shopify store is no small feat.
With the rise of e-commerce, Shopify has become a go-to platform for businesses looking to sell online. It's a favorite among e-commerce merchants, with a sleek interface, scalable processes, and a robust set of integrations.
But when it comes to inventory management, some Shopify users face their share of challenges — mismanaged inventory that leads to stockouts, overstocks, and other costly issues that can impact your business's bottom line.
To help you navigate these challenges, we’ll explain seven of the most common Shopify inventory issues — and how the right inventory management features can help you solve them. So whether you're a small business just starting or an established company, you'll be better equipped to streamline operations, reduce inventory expenses, and keep your customers happy.
Let's get to it.
Stockouts and overstocking are two sides of the same coin, and each one can harm your business in different ways.
Stockouts happen when inventory levels fall to zero before you have a chance to restock, leading to lost sales and unhappy customers. Overstocking, on the other hand, ties up capital in unsold goods, increases warehousing costs, and can result in dead stock if items go out of season.
For Shopify users, these issues are often exacerbated by a lack of real-time visibility into stock levels. Without accurate, up-to-the-minute inventory tracking, it’s nearly impossible to know exactly how much stock you have on hand or when to reorder.
The key to avoiding stockouts and overstocking lies in real-time inventory tracking and automated stock replenishment. Real-time tracking allows you to monitor your inventory as it changes, giving you complete visibility into stock levels across all sales channels. This ensures you always know when to reorder and reduces the chances of overselling or running out of stock.
Some Shopify inventory management apps, like Stocky or QuickBooks Commerce , offer automated stock replenishment features. These apps can be configured to automatically reorder items when inventory falls below a certain threshold — so you always have enough stock on hand without over-ordering.
Manually updating inventory isn't just time-consuming — it's also prone to human mistakes. Mistyping quantities, forgetting to update stock after a sale, or accidentally entering incorrect information can all lead to inventory discrepancies. These mistakes might not seem like a big deal at first, but they can accumulate quickly, leading to miscounts, stockouts, and over-ordering. And for Shopify merchants managing multiple SKUs or products with variations, these errors become even more frequent and challenging to track.
To eliminate manual errors, it’s important to implement automated inventory syncing across all your sales channels. Automated syncing ensures that inventory levels are updated in real time whenever a sale is made, whether on Shopify, Amazon, eBay, or another platform. This automation drastically reduces the likelihood of human error and ensures that your stock levels are always accurate.
Shopify offers built-in tools and third-party integrations that allow for seamless inventory syncing. Shopify’s multi-channel capabilities, along with more robust applications like Tailor, can automatically update your stock levels across all platforms — without the need for human intervention.
Many Shopify merchants sell products across multiple channels — from Amazon to eBay and even physical retail stores. But managing inventory across these channels can be a logistical nightmare. Without centralized management, you risk overselling on one platform while understocking on another — a lack of synchronization that can lead to unsatisfied customers, increased returns, and a tarnished reputation.
The solution to this issue is centralized multi-channel inventory syncing. With a centralized system, your inventory levels across all channels are updated in real time for even greater consistency and accuracy. This allows you to sell confidently across multiple platforms without worrying about stock discrepancies.
Apps like Linnworks and Sellbrite integrate well with Shopify and other platforms, giving you a centralized dashboard where you can manage all your sales channels in one place. By streamlining this process, you can ensure your stock levels stay consistent no matter where a sale occurs.
Customers expect fast shipping — especially in the age of same-day and overnight delivery. But if your inventory system is unorganized, it can slow down the order fulfillment process, which can lead to delayed shipments and, worse, unhappy customers.
Slow order fulfillment doesn't just frustrate buyers — it increases the likelihood of negative reviews, which can hurt your business's reputation in the long term. For Shopify merchants with big product catalogs or lots of sales volume, fulfilling orders quickly and accurately is a major factor in customer satisfaction.
One of the best ways to speed up order fulfillment is by using barcoding and SKU management. Barcoding allows you to scan products quickly and accurately during the picking, packing, and shipping processes, reducing the likelihood of human mishaps and speeding up fulfillment times.
A SKU management system can also help organize your inventory, making it easier to locate products in your warehouse or storage space. Shopify integrates with several barcode and SKU management tools, including Shopify POS as well as Tailor's barcode scanning capabilities, both of which can streamline your fulfillment process and reduce shipping times.
Inventory reporting is crucial for making informed business decisions, but many Shopify merchants struggle with limited reporting features. Without detailed reports on sales trends, top-selling products, and inventory movement, it's harder to forecast demand or make strategic purchasing decisions. It can also lead to over-ordering, under-ordering, and wasted resources — all of which are major no-nos.
Shopify users should invest in inventory management tools with powerful reporting and analytics features. These will give you deeper insights into sales performance, product trends, and inventory movement — so you can accurately forecast demand and make data-driven decisions.
Apps like Inventory Planner and Stock Sync offer advanced reporting and forecasting capabilities that integrate well with Shopify. They can also help you generate detailed reports on your inventory, sales trends, and customer behavior, giving you the insights you need to optimize stock levels and, ultimately, make your business more profitable.
For businesses that sell their products both online and in physical retail stores, keeping inventory consistent across channels can be a challenge. A customer might buy an item in-store, but without real-time syncing, your online store might still show that item as available. This, unfortunately, can lead to overselling, stockouts, and unhappy customers.
The best way to solve this problem is by using Shopify’s point-of-sale (POS) system or an integrated inventory management tool that syncs stock levels between your physical and online stores. This will ensure that your inventory is updated in real time, regardless of where a sale is made, helping you avoid overselling and stock discrepancies.
Tools like Shopify POS and Tailor's multi-channel functionality integrate directly with Shopify, allowing you to manage inventory across both your online and physical stores from one centralized system.
Shopify's default system doesn’t handle bundled products well, which can lead to a variety of stock mishaps. If one component of a bundle goes out of stock, the system might still show the entire bundle as available, leading to overselling and backorders.
To effectively manage your bundles and kits, you’ll need an inventory management tool capable of handling bundled product tracking. This should give you peace of mind with stock levels that are accurately updated for all bundle components.
Apps like Bundle Builder and SkuVault are designed to manage bundles and kits, ensuring that your inventory is accurately tracked for each individual product within a bundle.
Inventory management is a major component of running a successful Shopify store, but it comes with its challenges. From stockouts and overstocking to slow order fulfillment and manual errors, these issues can impact the profitability of your business and the happiness of your customers.
The good news? Tailor’s inventory management solution equips you with all the tools and technology you need to overcome these challenges.
With real-time tracking, automated stock replenishment, multi-channel syncing, and a deep well of reporting features, Tailor helps Shopify merchants stay on top of their inventory. So whether you're managing a single Shopify store or selling across multiple channels, our comprehensive, easy-to-use ERP solution will help your business grow without all those costly inventory mistakes.
Ready to take your Shopify store to the next level?
