Shopify Plus inventory management: Exclusive features for scaling your store

Did you know that almost 35% of eCommerce businesses struggle with inventory management, leading to missed sales and fulfillment delays? 

For fast-growing eCommerce brands, such gaps and inventory issues can mean thousands in lost revenue every month. That’s where Shopify Plus inventory management comes in, giving high-volume merchants the tools to handle large product catalogs, multiple warehouses, and real-time stock updates without breaking a sweat. 

Unlike basic setups, Shopify Plus equips scaling businesses with advanced features designed for accuracy, efficiency, and growth. In this guide, we’ll break down how it works, the benefits it brings, and why it’s becoming the go-to choice for merchants who can’t afford errors in inventory tracking.

What is Shopify Plus inventory management?

Shopify Plus inventory management is a centralized system within the Shopify enterprise platform that helps handle stock for large, fast-growing, and high-volume merchants. 

Quick explanation: Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level solution designed for high-volume businesses, offering advanced features. Standard Shopify, on the other hand, suits smaller businesses with simpler needs—the key difference between the two lies in scalability, customization, and automation capabilities. 

It functions by tracking inventory counts across multiple warehouses, retail stores, and online sales channels. This system also automatically updates product availability as orders are placed, directly addressing the critical challenge of overselling. 

And beyond simple tracking, Shopify Plus inventory management provides the framework for complex operations like creating product bundles with unique SKUs and managing backorders. 

For even more advanced control, apps like STOQ integrate smoothly to add powerful pre-order and back-in-stock alert features, turning potential stockouts into sales opportunities. 

Continue reading below to learn about the features and benefits of employing a Shopify Plus inventory management system.

Did you know? Businesses lose nearly 11% of their yearly revenue on average because of weak inventory practices, with stockouts and excess stock being the main culprits.

Shopify Plus exclusive inventory features

If you’re wondering whether Shopify Plus inventory management is worth the investment, here are six key features decoded: 

1. Multi-location inventory management

Unlike standard plans, Shopify Plus exclusive inventory features permit an extensive number of locations (20+), acting as a central command center for a distributed fulfillment network. 

You can assign specific inventory quantities to each warehouse, pop-up shop, or third-party logistics provider (3PL). So, when an order is placed, the system can be configured to prioritize fulfillment from a location based on proximity to the customer, reducing shipping costs and delivery times. 

This type of granular control extends to inventory transfers, allowing you to move stock between locations to rebalance levels and prepare for regional demand spikes, all while maintaining accurate stock counts across the entire network within a single dashboard.

2. Automation with Shopify Flow

Shopify Flow is an integrated tool that automates inventory-related tasks without coding. You can create custom workflows, or ‘Flows,’ that trigger actions based on predefined conditions. 

For instance, when a product's stock level dips below a specific threshold, a Flow can automatically tag the product as ‘Low Stock,’ notify a manager via email, or even generate a draft purchase order. 

This moves inventory management from a reactive to a proactive state. Other applications include automatically hiding products from the storefront when stock hits zero or restocking them when new inventory arrives, ensuring the customer-facing catalog is always accurate.

3. Unified multi-channel inventory syncing

Shopify Plus inventory management automatically synchronizes your inventory data across all connected sales channels, including your primary online store, Amazon, eBay, and Facebook Shops. 

A sale on any one of these platforms instantly deducts the quantity from your master inventory count in Shopify Plus. This real-time sync is crucial for preventing overselling and the resulting order cancellations that damage customer trust and seller ratings on marketplaces. 

It ensures that no matter where a customer shops, they see an accurate representation of product availability, creating a consistent and reliable brand experience.

4. Advanced product bundling and kitting

Shopify Plus inventory systems allow for the creation of complex product bundles, kits, or sets treated as a single saleable unit with its own SKU. 

For example, a ‘Starter Kit’ containing a razor, blades, and shaving cream can be assembled. When this bundle is sold, Shopify Plus automatically deducts one unit from the inventory of each component item (the razor, the blades, the cream). 

This simplifies the management and sale of promotional items or commonly purchased-together products, preventing the manual effort of adjusting individual component stock levels and reducing the potential for fulfillment errors.

5. Comprehensive custom reporting 

Shopify Plus inventory management systems offer advanced report building that goes beyond standard templates. 

You can generate custom reports focused specifically on inventory health, such as analyzing the sell-through rate for a specific product category across all locations or calculating the days of inventory remaining for seasonal items. 

These reports provide the raw data needed to make important decisions. 

6. Integrated B2B and DTC inventory pooling

A top Shopify Plus inventory management system feature is its ability to manage both direct-to-consumer (DTC) and business-to-business (B2B) operations within a single platform.

You can, for instance, allocate a shared pool of stock between their public store and wholesale portal. This gives a complete view of total inventory commitment, preventing large wholesale orders from unintentionally depleting stock reserved for retail customers and vice versa.

With this visibility, businesses can ensure both sales channels operate smoothly, simultaneously, without stock conflicts. 

Read More: Shopify inventory management best practices for 2025

Benefits of the Shopify Plus inventory system

As a merchant, below are some key benefits of the Shopify Plus inventory system that make handling stock easier, more accurate, and more efficient across all your sales channels: 

1. Unified inventory dashboards and detailed reporting

Managing inventory for several warehouses and sales channels through separate, disconnected systems can create significant operational drag. Shopify Plus inventory management system consolidates this into a single interface. 

A store manager can check stock levels in a retail store, a warehouse operator can process an online order, and a merchant can review channel performance, all from the same system. This eliminates the need for manual data reconciliation between spreadsheets and software, drastically reducing administrative time and human error.

2. Optimized stock levels, lowering holding costs

Shopify Plus provides the data visibility needed to right-size your inventory investment. By tracking sell-through rates and days of inventory remaining, you can easily identify slow-moving items that tie up capital. This also allows you to reduce excess safety stock, which directly help cut warehousing and insurance expenses. 

Further, the multi-location feature lets you position bestsellers closer to key customer hubs. This strategic placement minimizes long-zone shipping, leading to faster, cheaper deliveries. In simpler words, you actually avoid the dual financial drain of overstocking dead inventory and paying premium shipping fees for distant items.

3. Improved profitability with accurate financial insight

A top benefit of the Shopify Plus inventory system is that it offers powerful metrics for financial decision-making. 

For instance, ‘Inventory Valuation Summary’ shows the current stock value, while ‘Sell-Through Rate’ highlights how quickly products are moving. With ABC Analysis, items are grouped by performance: ‘A’ being top sellers and ‘C’ being slow movers. You can also track ‘Days of Inventory Remaining’ to forecast restocks and avoid costly shortages.

For example, a fashion retailer may use ‘ABC Analysis’ to identify fast-moving styles and adjust dynamic pricing to maximize revenue, while discounting slow movers before the season ends. 

You can further create custom reports or export data for deeper analysis, which can help fine-tune both pricing and inventory strategy.

4. Enhanced customer experience with accurate data

The Shopify Plus inventory management system directly contributes to a positive customer journey by providing reliable information. A customer will never encounter the frustration of ordering an in-stock item only to receive a cancellation email later. 

Features like backorder management allow you to capture sales even when items are temporarily out of stock, setting clear delivery expectations. 

By using a specialized app like STOQ to manage this process, you can automate ‘Notify Me’ requests and back-in-stock alerts, ensuring you never miss a sale and keep customers informed, which directly builds trust and loyalty.

5. Scalability for unconstrained growth

The architecture of Shopify Plus is built to handle sudden increases in volume without performance degradation. During a flash sale or a peak season like Black Friday, when transaction volumes can spike exponentially, the inventory management system continues to update in real-time. 

This scalability means a business can expand its product catalog, add new sales channels, or enter new markets without worrying about the platform buckling under pressure. The infrastructure grows with the business, removing a major technological barrier to expansion.

Read More: How to add ‘Notify Me When Available’ for any product on your Shopify store

Use cases for Shopify Plus inventory management

To help you truly understand what Shopify Plus inventory management and apps like STOQ bring to the table, below are some quick case studies: 

1. Allbirds, a global footwear brand, uses Shopify Plus to seamlessly manage its vast product catalog across multiple warehouses. The platform ensures stock levels are synchronized in real-time, enabling efficient operations and reliable order fulfillment.
2. Bentley, a luggage retailer, leveraged Shopify Plus and Shopify POS across 125+ locations to unify its online and in-store inventory. This integration provided a cohesive customer experience and drove a 129% revenue growth.
3. Early Rider, a UK-based kids’ bike brand, faced challenges with its complex range of SKUs. By using STOQ, they captured preorders accounting for 10% of sales before each delivery, aligning stock with real demand. STOQ’s back-in-stock alerts improved production forecasting, prevented overselling across variants, and provided actionable data.

As the Early Rider case shows, STOQ empowers brands on Shopify Plus to build proactive strategies for gauging demand, securing revenue early, and building a waitlist of eager customers.

Getting started: Supercharging Shopify Plus inventory management with STOQ

Shopify Plus provides a powerful system for managing your available stock, helping to prevent overselling and maintain accurate counts. However, even the most efficient inventory management cannot always prevent popular items from selling out. Stockouts are an inevitable part of retail, especially for high-demand products.

This is where STOQ adds a strategic layer to your Shopify Plus setup. 

You can add a ‘Preorder’ or ‘Notify Me’ widget to out-of-stock items in just minutes, fully customized to match your brand. By doing so, you create a waitlist for unavailable items. Upon restock, the system automatically sends ‘Back in Stock’ alerts via email or SMS to interested shoppers. 

This recovers potential lost revenue and keeps customer engagement high during gaps in product availability, making stockouts a manageable part of your sales cycle.

If you’re on Shopify Plus and are intrigued by STOQ’s capabilities, don’t wait! Sign up for free today with STOQ, and say goodbye to your inventory woes. 

‍Install once, scale forever…