How Versa Synchronizes Inventory With Shopify

Overview

Versa is capable of tracking inventory for your warehouses and then push the inventory data to your Shopify stores.  Versa can also pull inventory from Shopify and adjust the inventory in Versa to match Shopify.

In Shopify, there are 3 major numbers related to inventory, Quantity on hand, quantity committed and quantity available.  See detail from Shopify about these numbers. Quantity on hand is what you physically have in the warehouse, quantity committed is usually quantities on open orders that have not been fulfilled.  Quantity available is quantity on hand minus quantity committed. Warehouse is called Locations in Shopify.

How Is Quantity On Hand Determined

In Versa, we have quantity on hand, quantity allocated and quantity available.  Warehouse that holds inventories is called Facility  s in Versa. Quantity on hand and quantity available are similar to Shopify. Quantity allocated refers to quantities that have been reserved for different purposes. There are different reasons of allocating inventories: Allocate quantities on open orders, allocate quantity on production build or work order for BOM (where you make finished products from components), quantity being transferred to a different facility, or quantity on pick lists and in the process of being shipped out.  Orders are generally allocated automatically as they are entered into Versa (for non-Shopify orders) or imported from Shopify.  Allocation on orders can however be manual.

If you choose to send Versa's inventory numbers to Shopify, Versa will look at all the allocated quantities for a product in the system, then determine which of the allocated orders are Shopify orders and which are non-shopify related transactions. You can run into this cases where you have one facility (warehouse) and it is used to fulfill sales from multiple channels (Amazon, Shopify. Walkin, Storefront etc). To make sure you do not oversell in Shopify, the system will take the quantity on hand for a product and then subtract any quantity allocated that is not from Shopify orders , the number after this calculation is then sent to Shopify as quantity on hand. Basically, any allocation that is not  of Shopify origin will cause the quantity on hand to be reduced in Shopify thus ensuring you are not overselling. 

If any of the non-Shopify allocation is removed in the system, this increase in availabilities  will then be sent to Shopify as additional quantity on hand.

Other Considerations

Versa supports multiple facilities and you can define unlimited number of facilities. Facilities are generally your warehouses but they do not have been a real warehouse. Think of it as a way for you to segment inventories and sell them into different channels.

Versa is also capable of tracking inventories that are not owned by you but you need visibility of. These are called third party owned inventory. You create a facility and designated it as third party owned. Versa can connect to your suppliers system and keep the inventory numbers between this facility in sync with your supplier's warehouse. The inventory owed by third parties can also be pushed to Shopify via our integration. This way, you can sell your supplier's products online without having to physically store them. The system also support such arrangement in our shipping module.

Third party owned facility can be used when you have a consignment relationship with a supplier and you would like to track their products in a separate facility. But you can also choose to store inventories on consignment in a facility that also has your own inventory. You just need to designate the product is being on consignment but store in a regular facility so the system can track them correctly.