You’ve launched a new product. It’s flying off the shelf!
So you keep ordering X units of each product variant periodically, only to find out that variant “A” never sold a single piece, while “B” is in high demand. So now you have a surplus of “A” but keep running out of stock for “B’.
Evidently, managing your Shopify inventory can be a nightmare without reliable variant inventory tracking. Accurate inventory tracking is essential to preventing stock outs, overstock, and missed sales opportunities.
Businesses need tools that provide real-time insights into stock levels for each variant—whether it’s a specific size, color, or material—allowing them to make data-driven decisions that streamline operations and improve customer satisfaction.
In this guide, we explore the challenges of managing variant inventory in Shopify and introduce how Prediko’s AI-powered inventory tracking system simplifies the process.
What is a Variant Inventory Tracker in Shopify?
A variant inventory tracker helps manage the stock levels of different variations of a product in your Shopify store—such as size, color, or material.
For businesses juggling multiple product variants, this tool ensures that every variant is accounted for, preventing common issues like stock outs or surplus inventory.
Here's how it works:
- Tracks individual variants: Instead of tracking the total stock of a product, a variant inventory tracker keeps track of each specific variation (e.g., red size small, blue size medium).
- Updates stock levels automatically: When a customer purchases a variant, the tracker automatically updates the stock level for that specific combination.
- Provides insights: Variant inventory trackers can provide valuable insights into product demand, helping you optimize your inventory and avoid stock outs or overstocks.
How to Track Product Variants in Your Inventory with Shopify?
Here's a breakdown of the basic steps involved:
1. Create Variants:
- Head to your Shopify admin panel and navigate to "Products."
- Click "Add product" or choose an existing product.
- Scroll down to the "Variants" section. Here, you can define the different options (e.g., size, and color) for your product.
- Click "Add variant" and enter the specific details for each variation (e.g., size small, color red).
2. Set Up Product Tracking:
- Still on the "Variants" section, you'll see a checkbox for "Track Quantity." This enables tracking the individual inventory levels for each variant.
- Enter the starting inventory quantity for each variant.
3. Manually Update Values:
- As orders come in and you fulfill them, you need to manually update the inventory levels for each variant sold. This can be time-consuming, especially with a large number of variants.
All the Challenges with Variant Inventory Tracker Shopify
While Shopify’s built-in inventory tracker handles basic tasks, it quickly becomes inefficient for businesses with a growing product catalog and complex inventory needs. Here are the primary challenges scaling businesses face when relying on Shopify's in-built features:
1. Limited Visibility and Scalability
Shopify's built-in tracker doesn't offer a way to easily group variants by category, color, location, or other relevant criteria, making it difficult to manage as your inventory expands.
To monitor specific groups, you need to create separate workflows and tables manually. This can work for a small number of SKUs or variants, but becomes overwhelming and prone to human error as your inventory grows, creating a bottleneck in order fulfillment and limiting your team's capacity to focus on other crucial aspects like customer service.
2. No real-time forecasting
This means you have to rely on periodic stock takes to understand what's selling and when. Analyzing historical sales data manually takes a lot of cognitive effort. It requires significant time investment to decide which variants to order and discontinue.
Your team can better spend this valuable time optimizing your supply chain, reducing costs, and growing your business.
Using AI powered tools like Prediko can save you time and increase bottom-line revenue in the long run.
3. Limited Reporting Functionality
The available reports provide basic information on inventory levels but lack in-depth analysis. They don't offer crucial data like sales performance insights, seasonal trends, or account for demand fluctuations.
This lack of detailed reporting means that your operations team is putting in manual efforts to identify trends and make informed decisions.
This workload becomes unmanageable as your inventory grows, hindering your ability to respond effectively to market changes and manage stock effectively.
How Prediko Makes it Simple to Track Product Variant?
Prediko is an AI-powered inventory management app for Shopify admin that allows you to keep track of purchase orders, products at risk of stock outs, delays in fulfillment, and manage every product variant as well.
Here's how Prediko enhances Shopify's in-built features to provide better visibility for your inventory:
1. Comprehensive Inventory Table
Prediko provides a unified view of your inventory through its comprehensive inventory table. The table can help you find the information you need with its 100+ filter options.
You can refine your search based on criteria like "Collection", "Health", "Product" or “Store Location”.
Common filters are pre-configured for easy use and multiple filters can be combined to create highly specific searches.
You can use these filters to create a view with those variants. This can make identifying and tracking specific product variants easier and give you an easily accessible overview of your inventory without the hassle of creating workflows manually.
2. Demand Forecasting
Prediko's inventory management systems leverage historical sales data to predict future revenue, considering seasonal fluctuations and growth rates. It determines annual revenue based on this information.
Prediko also creates a top-down to achieve your sales goals and ensures that its inventory purchase recommendations align with the revenue goals you've set for yourself.
3. AI-powered Recommendations
Prediko’s buying recommendations offer a more advanced approach to inventory management compared to Shopify’s built-in features.
By considering factors like sales, lead time, demand forecasting, and desired stock levels, Prediko helps businesses turn these factors into insights and accurately predict future needs, avoid stockouts, and optimize their inventory. This proactive approach ultimately leads to improved sales and reduced costs.
4. Performance Reports
Prediko gives daily updates on product quantity and if any products or variants are at risk of stock out.
Apart from this, Prediko provides weekly email updates summarizing the sales performance for that week and how your planned sales compare to the actual sales.Prediko also analyses retail inventory and inventory value, a feature Shopify does not provide.
It gives a detailed analysis of how much stock is tied up in inventory, how many days of inventory you have left, and how much excess inventory you have in your warehouses.
These detailed insights help you adjust your buying process and enhance your inventory management to maximize revenue.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. How do I track inventory quantity in Shopify?
Shopify admin allows you to track inventory quantity for each product variant. You can set up inventory tracking, view current stock levels, and adjust them individually as needed.
However, as your business grows, manually managing multiple variants can become time-consuming. With Prediko, you can automate this process and gain real-time insights into your stock levels across all variants.
2. Does Shopify monitor inventory?
Shopify doesn't automatically monitor inventory in real-time. You'll need to manually set up inventory tracking for each product and regularly review stock levels to ensure accuracy. Prediko takes this a step further by providing automated inventory tracking and real-time updates, helping you prevent stock outs and overstock.
3. How to do inventory count with Shopify?
While Shopify admin doesn't have a built-in inventory counting feature, you can use the inventory tracking system to manually count stock and update the quantities in the Shopify dashboard.
Prediko simplifies this process by providing daily stock updates and detailed inventory reports, ensuring accurate counts and reducing manual oversight.
