How to show inventory locations on Shopify

Displaying your inventory locations on Shopify is a helpful tool to drive more customers from your website to your local stores. By learning how to show inventory locations on Shopify, you will increase your store’s visibility, improve your inventory management system, and increase sales. 

Continue reading to discover how to show inventory locations on Shopify using Shopify’s built-in tool, as well as how to optimize your inventory location management using a Shopify app. 

In this article:

Benefits of Adding Inventory Locations on Shopify

When you manage a store that operates across multiple locations, having the ability to display where each store is and what inventory quantities are available at individual store locations is a great way to improve your customer experience. 

Doing so gives customer’s the opportunity to shop in-store on the basis of knowing that what they are shopping for is in stock, or which store location best suits their needs, which will improve their shopping experience. 

In fact, a study by PayPal – ‘Do Retailers Really Know What Digital Shoppers Want?’ – found a critical pain point for online shoppers to be a lack of inventory availability and visibility. This accounted for 30% of the frustration felt by online shoppers. Using an inventory location app directly addresses this weakness and puts your store in a better position to gain and retain customers. 

What’s more, enabling inventory location management gives you the ability to add store filters, provide directions, and show your customer’s their closest store depending on location. This not only highlights your local presence but increases accessibility, a benefit for both you and your customer base. 

Showing your location inventory on Shopify is also a productive way to keep track of your inventory quantities across store locations and manage best-sellers, preferred stockists, and other useful analytics for store inventory management.


How Do I Add Inventory Locations on Shopify?

Anywhere that you physically stock inventory will count as a location in Shopify. This includes brick & mortar stores, pop-ups, fulfillment centers, or an app. Essentially, any location (physical or otherwise) that fulfills customer orders will need to be added as one of your inventory locations. 

Adding inventory locations to your Shopify store can be done in a few simple steps. The level to which you can adapt and manage your multiple locations will depend on whether you are using Shopify’s built-in feature or an integrated app. 

Shopify’s built-in feature has limitations depending on what Shopify plan you’re subscribed to, whereas using a Shopify integrated app provides access to more tools and better customization. 

We’re going to break down how to add inventory locations using both methods so you can decide on the best inventory location management tool for your business. 

Option 1) Add Inventory Locations with Shopify’s Built-In Settings

To add inventory locations using Shopify’s built-in feature, go to settings and add each location with its specific name & address. You will be able to select the type of location (e.g. “fulfill online orders from this location” or “this is a retail store”) depending on its use. Save the changes and your locations will be added to your Shopify store.

Once locations have been added, you’ll be able to deactivate or delete them when required. You’ll then need to assign inventory to each location, which we’ll cover in the next section. 

It’s important to remember that the number of locations that you are able to add will depend on your Shopify subscription plan. Shopify allows two locations to be added to its Shopify Stater plan and scales up to 50 locations with Shopify Plus. Using an integrated Shopify app removes this barrier, allowing unlimited store locations to be managed. 

Option 2) Add Inventory Locations with an Integrated Shopify App

Using an integrated app within Shopify to manage inventory locations allows you to add an unlimited amount of store locations to enhance your visibility and customize the customer interface to best suit your brand. 

ProMap ‑ Store Locator offers a range of features to amplify your inventory location management, such as bulk uploads within a simple management system, instant store directions, categorized tags, and customizable interactive maps. Customers have rated it 4.8 out of 5 for multiple locations inventory management. 

All you need to do to benefit from an integrated location management app is visit Shopify’s app store and click “add app”. Once you’ve added the app to your Shopify store, you can access it via the “apps” in your menu sidebar. 

Simply click on ‘ProMap – Store Locator’ and you’ll be taken to a dashboard with a simple layout to navigate through. In the “My Locations” section, manually add or bulk upload your list of stores and switch their status to live. All locations will then be automatically integrated into your Shopify store.


How To Show Inventory Locations On Shopify

Once you’ve added multiple locations to your online store, it’s time to learn how to show inventory locations on Shopify. This will drive more customers from your website to your store locations. 

The first part of the set-up is the same, whether you added your locations directly into Shopify’s settings or used ProMap ‑ Store Locator. Later, we will show you how to customize your store locations to increase visibility using an app. 

In the product section of your online store, you will notice that every product is stocked at a location. By default, any new products will be stocked at all locations, so you will have to select where it is stocked if limited to a specific store. 

It’s worth noting that all products need to be stocked in at least one location, and once an order or transfer has been placed for a product from that location, you won’t be able to unstock it despite being unfulfilled. 

Using ‘ProMap – Store Locator’ provides some additional benefits when it comes to how to show inventory locations on Shopify. These include:  

Custom Store Tags

Differentiate one store from one another by adding custom store tags to each location. A tag will display key information about each store, e.g. products or available stockists, and can be filtered via the interactive map. 

Instant Store Directions in a Customised Map

‘ProMap – Store Locator’ will automatically detect your customer’s location and provide instant directions to their nearest store. Within the interactive map, you can also design it in a way that best suits your brand with more than five Google map designs to choose from. 

Now you’ve added inventory locations and made them visible on your product page, you will need to track inventory quantities and manage them across multiple locations. This will ensure your fulfillment system is effective and customers have up-to-date visibility of what is available and where.

How Do I Manage My Inventory From Multiple Locations?

For products that are being fulfilled from multiple locations, you will need to manage inventory quantities at each store. You can do this from the product page, where you will control where it’s sold and the inventory quantities at each location. 

There will be an inventory section for each product as you will see in the image below. The incoming amount refers to the inventory quantity being transferred to that location and the committed amount is the orders that have been placed for the item. You will see in the final column, marked ‘available’, the inventory quantities at each location.  

Within the inventory section of each product page, you can update the available quantities, enable tracking for each product or variant, and edit locations if your fulfillment locations change. 

Time To Set Up Your Inventory Locations in Shopify

In this article, we have covered each up stage involved in how to show inventory locations in Shopify. By following these steps and investing in an integrated Shopify app, you will increase your store’s visibility and improve your customer’s shopping experience. 


Frequently Asked Questions

Can I prioritize locations for order fulfillment?

Yes! The general process for order fulfillment prioritises the location that can fulfill the entire order. If an order can’t be fulfilled in full from any location, then the location with the highest priority (as ranked by you in the relevant settings) will oversell the product. Overselling refers to when a product is sold despite having no stock at that location. 

Will I receive notifications when inventory quantities run low at store locations? 

You can choose what notifications you receive and how advanced you want them to be. 
To set up inventory tracking notifications, go to the Products section in the back-end of your Shopify store. Click the name of the product and variants that you want to track. In your Notifications settings, you can view and update what notifications you receive. 
You can also set up inventory notifications in the Shopify Fulfillment Network (SFN) app. This will estimate how many days until a product will sell out and notify you accordingly. You can choose the number of days’ notice you want to receive before the inventory sells out in your store locations. 

Why should I use an integrated app over Shopify’s built-in feature? 

Using an app, such as ProMap ‑ Store Locator, will unlock features that Shopify doesn’t have within its built-in service. Most importantly, ‘ProMap – Store Locator’ provides 24/7 customer support, so if you ever face a problem when either setting up or managing your inventory locations, there will be someone on hand to walk you through resolving it.