What is Multi-location inventory?

Once you store the same product in two or more places, you need to know how much sits in each location and how much you have in total. Without that, you can oversell from a location that is actually out of stock, or miss that one warehouse is full while another is empty.

Small store owners usually start with one location. As soon as you add a second, pick days or a pop-up location, you need rules for which location fills which order and when to move stock between them. Keeping a simple spreadsheet of counts per location, updated weekly, avoids most of the confusion.

Example

A candle brand keeps 200 units of its best seller in a home warehouse and 50 units in a retail store. Total inventory is 250 units. If the warehouse sells through its 200 units but the store still has 50, the brand is not out of stock overall, but online orders will fail unless someone moves stock from the store to the warehouse or ships from the store instead.

Common mistakes

• Treating each location's stock as separate totals instead of also tracking the combined number.
• Forgetting to account for stock in transit between locations when checking availability.
• Not deciding in advance which location ships which orders, leading to delays or split shipments.

Multi-location inventory and SteadyShelf

SteadyShelf forecasts and builds purchase orders per SKU based on total sales, but it does not manage transfers of stock between multiple locations.

SteadyShelf is launching on the Shopify App Store. Join early access to get the install link first.

Related terms

Inventory transfer · Reorder point · Safety stock · SKU · Stock cover

Full inventory glossary

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