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Locations are a fundamental part of Shopify’s inventory system. Every unit of stock exists at a specific location, and understanding this is key to effective inventory management.

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What Is a Location?

A location represents a physical or logical place where you store or fulfill inventory. Common examples include:
  • Warehouses — bulk storage facilities
  • Retail stores — physical shops where customers can buy in person
  • Fulfillment centers — third-party logistics (3PL) providers
  • Pop-up locations — temporary sales venues

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Multi-Location Inventory

When you have multiple locations, each variant’s stock is tracked independently at each one. A product might have 100 units at your warehouse but only 5 at your retail store — these are separate inventory levels.

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Location and Fulfillment

Shopify uses locations to determine where to fulfill orders from. The location with the closest proximity or highest stock might be chosen for fulfillment. Stockful helps you see this distribution so you can balance stock across locations.

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Location Deactivation

When you deactivate a location in Shopify, its inventory levels are removed. Stockful retains historical data for deactivated locations so you can still reference past inventory levels in reports.
Use Per-Location Tracking in Stockful to monitor individual location performance and spot imbalances.