Shopify offers a simple inventory management tool as part of its package. You may use the tool but are not required to. Today I am going to talk about the pros and cons of using inventory management and Shopify.
Why use Shopify's inventory control?
Inventory control is useful if you are a large business and need to track your inventory. However if you're a small store, like me, visual inventory control is simple and effective. By using Shopify's inventory control feature, you can always see how many items are available in your inventory to sell and which inventory items need to be restocked. This is especially useful if you rely on a drop shipper.
The Shopify inventory control feature has option that allows to stop selling or keep selling even if you are out of stock. This gives you lots of flexibility and offers control and options.
Option #1 Sold Out.
Shopify allows a product to show that it is "sold out". Make sure that you show related products on your product page. You hate to lose a sale because a customer leaves your store in disappointment. Related products are easy to show. Enable this feature in your theme's product page layout.
"Sold Out" is useful in creating a sense of urgency. For example, you might be selling several styles of signed, limited edition prints. Shopify's inventory control will allow you to show your customers how many prints available to sell and when it is "sold out". If your product page redirects your customer to other prints for sale, you would have created urgency to buy another style print before those also become "Sold Out".
Watch this online.
Option #2 Don't use any Shopify's inventory controls
Most of us have multi channels selling our products. Multichannel - that's just a fancy way of saying eBay, Amazon, Etsy and your bricks and mortar store. Keeping track of your inventory available for sale in all your sales channels is a daunting task. There are apps to manage this but for most of us the apps are too expensive and too complex to manage.
Since most of our stores are simple operations, we can manage our inventory visually by looking at what's on our shelves. But what happens when the item is out of stock?
Option #3 Selling out of stock items.
Every now and then it happens. You're out of stock. Shopify has a way to address the out-of-stock issue. If you use the inventory control function simply choose to "sell through". My definition fo selling through means that the customer will purchase something that you do not physically have in stock to ship. Its not a sin to do this. Perhaps the item is in transit and will arrive shortly and you will be able to ship it in a timely manner and save the sale.
When you allow your customer to purchase something you don't have in stock, you need to contact your customer directly and give them a realistic delivery date or suggest an alternative item that would fulfill their needs. For a small shop, this is a feasible option. I suggest doing this by phone as its the most expedient method. Most customers don't mind waiting a few days or hearing about an alternative option. If the customer does not want to wait a few days or want an alternative item, you can always refund them their money.
To allow a product to "sell through", click the box that says "Allow customers to purchase this product when it's out of stock" on the product page.
If you don't use the inventory control function, by default, you will sell through.
Option #4 Hide the Product
You can change the "Visibility" until you get inventory in stock. I do not advise hiding the product unless you are never going to sell this item again. Hiding products will confuse your customers and Google. And you may forget to "make it visible" when you do get it back in stock. If it's not visible - you can't sell it.
To control Visibility, click the "Visibility" box at the top right hand side of the product page.
In my shop, Good Life Tea.com I use a combination of inventory control systems. I sell a combination of tea and tea ware. Monitoring the amount of tea I have on hand is easy because it's very visual. I simply look on the shelf and see which glass jars are getting low. But my tea ware is another story. Since I keep some on the selling floor and some in my storage area, it's hard to see how much inventory I have. So for my tea ware, I use Shopify's inventory controls. However, since I do not use Shopify POS, my inventory is not exact. If I did use Shopify's POS then my inventory would be accurate, since the POS and E-commerce would be integrated. (I tried the POS and it was not adequate for me because I sell tea by the ounce and Shopify POS does not accommodate this style of inventory. I use Shopkeep for my POS)
Pro Tip
For my tea ware, I set the inventory count to about 1/4 of my total stock. This means if I have 12 red tea pots, I list 3 in my Shopify inventory. I do this because from my experience, I know that out of 12 teapots I will sell about 3 by Shopify and 9 in my store. By referring to the inventory page, I get a good picture of what inventory needs to be ordered.
I hope my insights have given you some pros and cons of using Shopify inventory control system. The important take away is that it is a tool that can be turned on and off for specific items products that you sell. The inventory control can be used as an approximation tool of how much you have on hand. Even though it is not entirely accurate, it provides clues as to what to reorder so that you are never out of stock.
My Shopify Wants
I would like to get email notifications when my inventory levels get low. This would help me keep tabs. Also make the POS work for ounces.
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