Yes. Shopify has a built-in inventory system. It keeps a quantity for every product variant at every location, splits that quantity into five states (available, committed, unavailable, on hand and incoming), records every adjustment with a reason and a history, moves stock between locations with transfers, and takes stock off when an order or a POS sale goes through. For a business that buys finished goods and sells them, that's most of what inventory means. For a business that makes what it sells, it's half: Shopify counts the jars of jam and has no idea about the sugar. Here's what it does, exactly, and where the line is.
The short version
- Shopify tracks quantity per variant, per location. You turn it on per variant with "Track quantity".
- Five states. On hand is the total of available, committed and unavailable; incoming is on its way.
- It does transfers, adjustments with reasons, history, purchase orders, and a POS that sells from a location's available stock.
- It does not do ingredients, components, recipes, lot numbers, expiry dates or first-expired-first-out. Shopify's own advice for those is to add an app.
- Location limits: 2 on Starter, 10 on Basic, Grow and Advanced, 200 on Plus.
What Shopify's inventory does
| Shopify | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Quantity per variant per location | Yes | Turn on "Track quantity" per variant |
| Five inventory states | Yes | Available, committed, unavailable, on hand, incoming |
| Adjustments with a reason | Yes | Correction, count, received, return restock, damaged, theft or loss, promotion or donation |
| Adjustment history | Yes | Per variant per location |
| Transfers between locations | Yes | Stock shows as incoming until received |
| Purchase orders | Yes | For finished goods you buy in |
| Low-stock alerts | Through Shopify Flow or an app | Not a switch in the base product |
| Bundles | With the free Shopify Bundles app | A bundle's quantity is worked out from its components |
| Ingredients and raw materials | No | Nothing in Shopify is an ingredient |
| Recipes or a bill of materials | No | |
| Lot numbers, expiry dates, FEFO | No | Shopify's blog says to use an app on top |
Everything in that table comes from Shopify's own help center, read on September 23, 2026, and the pages are listed under the sources at the bottom. The bottom three rows are the whole reason this article exists.
The five states, in a maker's words
Shopify's definitions, lightly shortened. "Available inventory refers to inventory that you can sell." Committed is "units that are set aside and can't be sold, such as units in an unfulfilled order, reserved in a draft order, or in a transfer that's marked as ready to ship." Unavailable is "units set aside by apps or held for other reasons, such as damaged, quality control, or safety stock." On hand "is made up of the total of your Committed, Unavailable, and Available inventory." And incoming is stock "on its way to your location from inventory transfers or apps", which "isn't available to sell until it has been received" (Shopify).
So if a shelf holds 48 pouches of chips, of which 12 are on an unfulfilled online order and 6 are dented, Shopify shows 48 on hand, 12 committed, 6 unavailable, 30 available. That's a good model, and it's the one to copy in a spreadsheet if you're not ready for software.
The two settings behind most of the confusion
"Track quantity" is per variant, and off by default for a new product. Off means Shopify sells the item without counting it, which is what "inventory not tracked" means when it appears in the admin, in a report, or in the searches people type at midnight. On means Shopify keeps the number and stops selling at zero, unless you also turn on "Continue selling when out of stock", which lets the online store oversell on purpose. Shopify notes that this second setting "doesn't apply to Shopify POS. Staff can continue selling products when available inventory reaches zero and below" (with a warning first) (Shopify). So the register can take a shop below zero on a Saturday, and Monday's count starts with a negative number.
If a product shows "Not stocked" at a location, it isn't being carried there; you stock it at that location before you can sell it from there. If the available column shows a dash, the product is inactive at that location, even when an on-hand quantity is recorded. Both trip people up after adding a location or importing a CSV, and Shopify inventory not updating walks through the fixes.
What it looks like for a business that makes things
Windward Roots, the sample business inside the TaroStack app, sells taro chips, poi and kūlolo through an online store, two shops with Shopify POS, a Saturday market and wholesale accounts. Its distribution center, kitchen and two shops are Shopify locations. Shopify knows there are 1,236 pouches of taro chips at the distribution center and 48 at the Kailua shop, and that 600 of them are committed to Thursday's Foodland order.
Shopify doesn't know that the 1,236 pouches are two lots, 216 with 28 days of shelf life left and 1,020 with 78, or that Foodland won't accept anything under 30. It doesn't know about the 300 kg of taro sitting at the co-packer for Wednesday's run, the 3,800 empty pouches, or the coconut oil. It can't say what could be made tomorrow, and it can't take 85 g of chips out of a bulk bin when a pouch is sold, because bulk chips aren't a product. That's not a criticism of Shopify. It counts what it sells, and it does that well.
Bundles cover one corner of this. The free Shopify Bundles app works out a bundle's stock from its components: "divide the product's total available inventory by the quantity required for the bundle", and the lowest result, rounded down, is how many bundles can be sold (Shopify). Windward Roots' three-flavor variety pack works that way. A recipe doesn't, because components have to be sellable products and 85 g of bulk chips isn't one. And Shopify's own blog on perishable stock says plainly that its core features "focus on quantities" and that for "expiration dates, lot or batch tracking, or FEFO picking rules" you use inventory software on top of Shopify (Shopify blog, March 5, 2026).
Three ways makers fill the gap
The first is a spreadsheet beside Shopify: a list of materials, a bill of materials per product, and a weekly export of what sold, multiplied through. It works, and Shopify raw materials inventory lays the whole sheet out with a worked example. The second is a manufacturing app from the Shopify App Store, of which there are several; check that it handles units, yield and lot numbers, and not only component counts. The third is inventory software built for makers that connects to Shopify, which is what TaroStack is, with honest caveats below.
Where this stops working
Shopify's numbers stay right as long as everything that changes stock goes through Shopify. Sales do. Production doesn't: nothing in Shopify knows that Tuesday's batch turned 25 kg of taro into 1,180 pouches, so somebody adds 1,180 by hand, on Tuesday, if they remember. Wholesale orders that don't come through Shopify, market sales rung up on a tablet, transfers to a co-packer, and the day a lot has to be found and pulled: all outside. The more you make, the more of your stock lives in places Shopify can't see.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the side Shopify can't: ingredients and packaging by lot, recipes with sub-recipes and unit conversion, production orders that take from the lots that expire first and note which ones they used, and the question "what could I make right now" answered from what's on the shelf. Pouches, cups and loaves are lots with dates, so Foodland's 30-day rule is applied at picking, not remembered. You connect your Shopify store and we set it up with you; orders arrive by import and a daily check rather than to the second, and we're not in the Shopify App Store yet, which is why it's done with you. Starter includes Shopify or Square at $49 a month; Standard adds recipes, batches and planning, and both channels, at $99 a month.