If your Shopify store has more than one location (for example a shop and a warehouse), Shopify decides which location each order is fulfilled from. That includes orders ChannelUnity imports from your marketplaces. If Shopify chooses a location that has no stock of the item, it can refuse the order, even though you have stock somewhere else.
This article explains how that works and what to check in Shopify so your orders import first time.
How it works
- Stock levels: ChannelUnity reads your stock from the Shopify locations set up for your account and adds them together. If you have 1 in your Warehouse and 0 in your Shop, ChannelUnity sends a quantity of 1 to your marketplaces.
- Order import: When an item sells, ChannelUnity creates the order in Shopify. Shopify then chooses which of your locations will fulfil it, using your shipping profiles and order routing settings.
- Stock check: If a product is set to stop selling when out of stock, Shopify checks that the chosen location has enough stock. If it doesn’t, Shopify rejects the order.
ChannelUnity can’t choose the location for Shopify. That’s controlled entirely by your Shopify settings.
Signs this is affecting you
An order shows as not imported in ChannelUnity with a message like:
- Insufficient stock. Unable to claim inventory
- Insufficient stock. Unable to reserve inventory
…and you know the item was in stock at one of your locations when it sold.
What to check in Shopify
1. The location can fulfil online orders
Go to Settings > Locations and select the location.
Make sure Fulfill online orders from this location is turned on for every location that holds stock you sell on marketplaces.
2. The location is in your shipping profile, with rates
Go to Settings > Shipping and delivery and open the shipping profile your products use (usually General shipping rates).
- Under Shipping from, check every location that holds marketplace stock is listed.
- Make sure each of those locations has shipping rates for the countries you sell to.
If a location is missing or has no rates, Shopify may not fulfil orders from it. It could pick another location that has no stock instead.
If you use more than one shipping profile, check each one.
3. Order routing rules
Go to Settings > Shipping and delivery > Order routing.
Order routing applies a list of rules, in order, to choose a location. Check that:
- Minimize split fulfillments is switched on. This rule prefers a location that can fulfil the whole order from its own stock.
- If you use Ranked locations, the location holding your marketplace stock (for example your warehouse) isn’t ranked below locations that usually have none.
4. Only stock products where you actually hold them
If an item is only ever kept in one location, remove the others from that product’s inventory locations: open the product in Shopify, go to Inventory, and manage its locations.
If only one location stocks the item, Shopify always uses that location. This is the quickest fix for warehouse-only stock.
Things to be aware of
- Stock split across locations: Shopify won’t split one order line between locations. If someone buys 2 and you have 1 in each of two locations, the order can still be rejected even though you have 2 in total.
- “Continue selling when out of stock”: If this is ticked on a product, Shopify will accept the order even if the chosen location has no stock, and that location’s stock goes negative. The order imports, but you may need to move it to the correct location in Shopify and fix the stock afterwards.
- Changing stock in Shopify by hand: If you set stock to 0 in Shopify to stop further sales, ChannelUnity sends the new level to your marketplaces at the next stock update.
Re-sending a failed order
Once you’ve corrected your settings, an order that failed for this reason can be sent to Shopify again, as long as it’s still open on the marketplace. (On the ChannelUnity orders page, click to view the details of an order, and click the button “Retry sending to cart”.) If the item has already been dispatched, or you’ve created the order in Shopify by hand, don’t re-send it, or you’ll get a duplicate order.
If you’re unsure, or you’d like us to confirm which Shopify locations ChannelUnity reads stock from for your account, contact ChannelUnity Support.