Stocktake scope, caps and current limits

What a stocktake can cover, which products it leaves out, and where the edges are.

What you can scope a count by

• All products at this location - everything Shopify tracks and stocks there
• Filter by vendor, type, category, tag or collection
• Choose specific products you pick individually

Under Counting options, Only include variants with stock on hand leaves out variants Shopify shows with zero or negative stock on hand at that location. If you find stock for one of them while counting, scan it and it is added to the count.

The variant cap

A single stocktake covers at most 100,000 variants, which is more than most catalogues hold at one location.

If a filter or a hand-picked list resolves larger than that, Stockie tells you how many variants it covers and asks you to narrow the scope before the count is created. An All products scope is measured while the count is being prepared, so it reports there instead. Scanning extra products into a count stops at the same cap.

Cycle counts by vendor or product type are often easier to staff and finish than one wall-to-wall count, whatever the size of your catalogue.

Archived and draft products

Active and unlisted products are always counted. Draft and archived products are left out unless you ask for them: Counting options on the new stocktake page has Include draft products and Include archived products, both unticked to start.

Bundle products

Bundle products cannot be counted. Shopify works out a bundle's stock from its components, so it will not accept a direct change to the bundle itself.

Bundles are not kept out of a count's scope, so a bundle in scope is caught when you apply the count. The apply stops before anything changes and names the bundle products, so you can exclude those lines and apply again. Counting the component products is what moves a bundle's stock.

Excluding collections

You can scope a count to a collection, but you cannot scope a count to everything except a collection. There is no exclusion rule.

Where you need to leave a range out, either scope positively to what you do want - by vendor, type, category or tag - or pick products individually.

Counting hardware

Stocktakes are counted with a barcode scanner attached to a computer, or by typing into the Counted column.

Phone and tablet cameras cannot be used as scanners. A wireless scanner paired to the device running the count is the supported route.

Printing a count sheet

On the counting screen, Export count sheet gives you a PDF to print and write on, or a CSV to fill in on a computer. When the view is filtered you can choose Current view or All variants being counted. Untick Include Shopify on hand for a blind count, where the sheet does not show the expected figures.

The PDF holds up to 5,000 variants. Above that, filter the view to a section or take the CSV, which has no limit.

The one manual step is coming back: counts written on paper have to be keyed in afterwards. The sheet cannot be scanned or uploaded back into the stocktake.

Shopify POS

Stocktakes are not available in Shopify POS. They run in the Stockie admin only.

Notes on a stocktake

A stocktake carries a name and a record of who created it. There is no free-text notes field for recording the circumstances of a count.