How to bulk edit inventory quantities in Shopify

Shopify has two ways to change stock for many products at once: its Inventory page, which has a bulk editor of its own, and an inventory CSV file you export, change in a spreadsheet and import again. Here's how each works and where each one catches people out.

On Shopify's Inventory page

In Products, Inventory, pick a location, then click a quantity in the Available or On hand column. Set to replaces the count, such as after a stock take, and Adjust by adds or removes a number, such as for a delivery. Each change waits as pending until you click Save, and leaving the page first discards it.

For many rows at once, tick them and click Bulk edit, then type each new quantity in the table. A product with variants has its stock bulk edited from the Inventory page only, and there the variants come in the order the Inventory page was sorted in, not grouped by product. Every change shows in the adjustment history, but there's no undo: putting counts back means entering each old number again.

With an inventory CSV file

Export from Products, Inventory, Export, in one of two formats:

All states, the one Shopify recommends: a row for each variant at each location, with On hand (current) and On hand (new). When a file has both, Shopify compares each row's count with On hand (current) before changing it, and a row whose stock changed after the export doesn't import. An email lists those rows.
Available: a column for each location with its available quantity. It's simpler, and nothing stops it overwriting a count that changed after the export, such as by a sale.

Shopify's own guide names the other catches:

Quantities are whole numbers, and Not stocked marks a location that doesn't stock the variant.
An empty On hand (new) leaves that count as it is.
A location name has to match the one in Shopify exactly, capital letters included.
A file over 15 MB has to be split into smaller ones.
Clearing On hand (current) turns the safety check off, which Shopify keeps for emergencies.

Set or add?

A set suits a stock take: the number you counted becomes the count. An add suits a delivery: it moves the count by what arrived, so orders placed in the meantime still count. A set made from a number read a while ago can put back stock that has since sold, which is what the All states check is there to catch.

How AK: Bulk Product Price Editor edits stock

It sets the Available or On hand quantity, or adds or subtracts a number, at each location you choose, for all the variants a search finds, such as every variant that's low on stock.
It turns tracking on or off, lets a variant keep selling or stop selling when it's out of stock, and connects products to another location.
Before anything is written, it shows every quantity before and after, location by location.
Each new quantity goes to Shopify with the number the app read just before, and Shopify changes it only if the count still matches, so an order placed during the run isn't overwritten.
Every run has a receipt and an undo. Undo puts a count back only while it's still the one the run set, and a count a sale has moved since is listed and left as the sale left it.

The Free plan changes up to 25 products in one run, and every plan has every feature. The field by field detail is on what undo covers, the other ways back are in how to undo a bulk edit in Shopify, and the app is on the Shopify App Store.

Questions

Write to me at support@aislekit.app.