Help
Log in

Setting up fulfillable inventory

Fulfillable inventory controls whether products display on your online store. This is based on inventory availability at locations that ship to your customers. All customers can only complete checkout for products that are in stock at locations that deliver to their shipping zone.

If your store was created before April 2024 and you've never activated fulfillable inventory, then you can choose one of the following options:

  • Show only fulfillable inventory: Products display only when they're in stock at locations that deliver to the customer's shipping zone.
  • Show all products: All products display on your online store, even when they're not in stock at locations that ship to the customer. Customers can still only complete checkout for products that can be shipped to them.

On this page

Understanding fulfillable inventory

All Shopify stores operate with the following behavior:

  • Customers can only purchase products that are in stock in locations that ship to their shipping zone.
  • Orders are automatically routed to locations that have enough inventory and can ship to the customer.
  • You can't oversell inventory across shipping zones. To oversell specific products, you can activate the Continue selling when out of stock option in the product details page.

Example of how fulfillable inventory works

Sally's Soaps business has two locations, one in the United States and one in Canada, with shipping zones configured for each country. There are two Coconut Bar Soaps in stock in the United States location, but zero in stock in the Canada location.

Customers in the United States can view and purchase the product. Customers in Canada can't complete checkout because there's no inventory at locations that ship to Canada. For stores created before April 2024, the Show only fulfillable inventory setting determines whether the product displays to customers in Canada.

Configure fulfillable inventory for your online store

You can control whether products display on your online store when they aren't available at locations that ship to a customer's shipping zone.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Shipping and delivery.

  2. In the Shipping section, click the fulfillable inventory link.

  3. Choose whether you want to display all products or only fulfillable inventory on your online store:

    • To display only products that are in stock at locations that deliver to the customer's shipping zone, select Show only fulfillable inventory.
    • To display all products on your online store, even when they're not stocked at locations that ship to the customer, deselect Show only fulfillable inventory. Customers can still only complete checkout for products that can be shipped to them.

  4. Click Save.

Preparing your store for fulfillable inventory

If you're using the legacy Sell from all locations to all shipping zones option, then ensure your customers can purchase your products across shipping zones.

Steps:

  1. Assign shipping rates to all locations with inventory in your shipping profiles for each shipping zone where you want to sell.
  2. Optional: If you need to send a single carrier shipping rate request even when an order is fulfilled from multiple locations, then instead of separate requests for each location in a group, you can contact Shopify Support to activate this feature for your store.
  3. Ensure inventory is available at the locations with assigned shipping rates for each shipping zone.
  4. Optional: To allow overselling for specific products, activate the Continue selling when out of stock option for that product in the product details page.
  5. If you're not using Markets and want customers in your backup region to view products as in stock, then add shipping rates for that region or change your backup region to one that already has shipping rates.