What is Inventory?

Inventory is the screen that answers what to buy. It reads your live Shopify stock, sets it against how fast each product is expected to sell, and ranks what needs attention. You find it under Selling › Inventory in the menu.

At Fairgreen Golf Co., Priya Raman opens it every Monday on Everything low, filters to Portside Mills, and has that week's order drafted before the trading meeting starts.

What is Store analytics? tells you what sold. Inventory tells you what happens next week if you do nothing.

Why not just look at stock levels in Shopify?

Because a stock level on its own does not tell you anything. Forty units is comfortable for one product and a fortnight from a stockout for another.

Fairgreen carries forty of a merino quarter-zip and forty of a logo cap. The quarter-zip has eleven days of cover and the cap has four months.

Only one of those is a problem, and a stock list sorted by quantity puts them side by side. Inventory puts the quarter-zip at the top and tells you how many to order.

What does it work out for you?

Five figures per product, shown as columns on every view except Oversold, Reorder now and Dead stock:

• Cover: roughly how many days the stock you can ship lasts at the expected rate of sale, shown as ~11d.
• In stock: Shopify's Available figure, added up across the locations you ship from. It is lower than Shopify's on-hand count whenever orders are waiting to ship.
• Incoming: what Shopify records as incoming at those locations.
• Reorder: enough units to cover expected sales over the vendor's lead time plus a week of safety stock, less what is in stock and incoming.
• Fill cost: the Reorder quantity multiplied by the cost per item recorded in Shopify.

Each of those rows also carries a status pill: Oversold, Critical, Low, Healthy or Not tracked. How each figure is worked out, and where the expected rate of sale comes from, is How to find out what you need to reorder.

What are the eight views?

One menu at the top of the list, in three groups:

• Alerts: Oversold.
• Low stock: Top 100 by units, Top 100 by revenue, At risk now, Reorder now, Everything low.
• Catalog: All stock, Dead stock.

Lists your team saves appear below them under Your lists. Choosing between the views, and the ranking window some of them use, is How to choose a stock view and ranking window.

When would you use it?

• Writing the week's orders. Everything low lists every product that needs ordering and drafts one purchase order per supplier for you. See How to find out what you need to reorder.
• Keeping core lines topped up. Buying › Replenishment in the left menu opens a screen where you set a minimum and maximum for each product and fill an order up to them. See How to set stock limits and reorder up to them.
• When something has gone wrong, to find what you have sold and do not have. See How to find items running out, oversold, or not selling.
• At the end of a season, to find the cash sitting in stock that is not moving. The same page covers Dead stock.
• When a stock figure is wrong, to correct it and write it back to Shopify. See How to work out a restock cost and correct a stock count.
• When a shelf or a location no longer matches Shopify, to count it, review every difference and post them together. See How to count your stock.
• Watching a launch or a range, by saving its products as a list. See How to filter and save a list of products to watch.

What sits next to it under Selling?

Three neighbouring pages answer the questions Inventory leaves to them:

• Use Selling › Demand when you want the forecast itself: how many units each category is expected to sell, and the settings behind it. See How to read demand and set your forecast.
• Use Selling › Stock value when you want to know what the stock you own is worth. See How to see what your stock is worth.
• Use Selling › Counts when you want to count the stock at a location, review the differences and post them to Shopify. See How to count your stock.

To ask about stock in a sentence instead, see How to ask about stock, suppliers and marketing.

What does a workspace need for this to work?

• The Store module on and Shopify connected, the same as the rest of What is Store analytics?. See How to connect your Shopify store.
• Permission to see the dashboards. See sales, inventory, reports and the daily brief, the row in Settings › Permissions that opens Analytics and Inventory, starts at lead.
• Change stock, receiving and store settings for correcting stock and managing saved lists. It also starts at lead. See How to set who can do what.

Replenishment and Stock value need the Purchase orders module on and View purchase orders and the buying calendar. Drafting purchase orders needs the Purchase orders and Brain modules on and Edit purchase orders and the buying calendar.

Demand needs the Forecasting module, which is on unless an admin turned it off in Settings › Modules.

Two habits make the numbers match reality. Record each product's cost in Shopify, so Fill cost has something to multiply. Record each supplier's Lead time on its supplier page, covered in How to add and set up a supplier.

Can you see it on a phone?

Yes. In a phone browser, a row of tabs above the page switches between Analytics, Inventory and the other store pages.

In the iPhone app, the Store tab has an Inventory segment with four cards: Low stock, Top 100 watchlist, Reorder plan and Dead stock. See Using Tideswell on your phone.

Read this section in order

Start with How to choose a stock view and ranking window, because every other page assumes you can get to the right view. Then How to find out what you need to reorder, the job most people are here for, and How to set stock limits and reorder up to them for products you keep between a minimum and a maximum.

When something looks wrong, read How to find items running out, oversold, or not selling and How to work out a restock cost and correct a stock count. To keep an eye on a set of products, read How to filter and save a list of products to watch.

To check a shelf or a location against Shopify, read How to count your stock, then How to see what is due for a count and what has gone missing for what is due and what has gone missing.

The other two neighbouring pages come last: How to read demand and set your forecast for the forecast, and How to see what your stock is worth for what your stock is worth.