Managing inventory across multiple Shopify locations

Locations vs multiple Shopify stores

These are often confused, but they solve different problems.

Locations. In Shopify, a location is any physical place where you sell products, fulfill orders or stock inventory, including third-party fulfillment services. Inventory is tracked separately at each one. How many locations you can add depends on your plan.

Expansion stores. On Shopify Plus, an organization can run up to ten stores, one main store and nine expansion stores, under one contract. According to Shopify's documentation, products, settings and inventory aren't synced between those stores; syncing needs an app or an ERP.

Markets. If the goal is selling in other countries, you usually don't need a second store. Shopify Markets lets one store sell to different countries and regions with their own currency, language and pricing.

How inventory gets out of balance

Even with good planning, multi-location stock drifts apart because:

• Locations sell at different speeds, but deliveries are often split evenly.
• Promotions and local events spike demand in one place.
• Returns come back to one location and build up there.
• Order routing pulls online orders from whichever location has stock, emptying some faster than others.

Signs your locations are imbalanced

• One location keeps running out of a product while another has weeks of it.
• Online orders split into several shipments because no single location has everything.
• You're reordering a product that's sitting unsold at another location.

The clearest measure is days of supply at each location: stock on hand ÷ daily sales. If one location has 5 days and another has 40 of the same product, it's out of balance.

Transfer or reorder?

When one location is running low, you have two options: move stock you already own, or buy more.

Worked example: two locations, one productExample numbers

	Location A	Location B
Daily sales	20 units	5 units
Stock on hand	100 units	200 units
Days of supply	5 days	40 days

Balancing by sales pace, A should hold 300 × (20 ÷ 25) = 240 units, so moving 140 units from B to A leaves both with 12 days of supply.

Now compare the options. Suppose transfer shipping costs $0.80 a unit, gross profit is $12 a unit, and a new supplier order takes 14 days:

• Transfer: 140 × $0.80 = $112, and A is restocked in days.
• Wait for a reorder: A runs out in 5 days and stays out for about 9 more. That's 9 × 20 = 180 lost units, or about $2,160 of gross profit.

The rule of thumb: transfer when the cost of moving stock is less than the profit you'd lose to a stockout, and the sending location will still have enough to last until its own next delivery. Reorder when the business as a whole is running low, not just one location.

Multi-Location Inventory Imbalance EstimatorWhich of two locations is overstocked or understocked, and how many units to move.Open calculator

In Shopify, moves between locations are handled with inventory transfers, which track the stock in transit and let you receive it at the destination.

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How to keep Shopify multi-location inventory balanced

• Split new stock by sales share, not evenly. A location selling 80% of the units should get roughly 80% of each delivery.
• Set reorder points per location. The reorder point calculator works the same way for each one.
• Use order routing deliberately. Shopify's order routing rules can favor the nearest location with stock; check they aren't draining one location while others sit full.
• Review days of supply weekly for best-sellers, especially before and during busy periods.
• Centralize slow movers in one location rather than spreading small amounts everywhere.

Deciding which locations stock what

Not every product needs to be everywhere:

• Best-sellers belong close to your customers, split across locations by sales share.
• Slow movers are usually better kept in one central location and shipped from there.
• Bulky or heavy products should sit where they're cheapest to store and ship.
• New products can start at a single location until you know where they sell.

Tracking days of supply by location in a spreadsheet

Export stock levels by location and the last 30 days of sales, then set up one row per product per location:

Highlight any row where days of supply is shorter than your supplier lead time (likely to run out) or very long, say over 90 days (likely overstocked). Rows for the same SKU with very different days of supply are your transfer candidates.