How to stop overselling across Shopify and wholesale
One stock count for every place you sell. A wholesale order takes its units off what your Shopify store shows within seconds, not at the end of the day.
You know this if…
- You email a customer to say the thing they just paid for is out of stock.
- A wholesale order on the whiteboard and a Shopify sale both took the last carton.
- Someone updates the store's stock by hand, and it is right for about an hour.
- You keep a few units "hidden" in Shopify, just in case.
Why it happens
Overselling is two records of one shelf. The store counts what it sold; the wholesale side counts what is on the order book or the spreadsheet; neither knows what the other promised until someone reconciles them, usually after a customer has paid.
The fix is not more careful copying. It is one count that every channel reads, and an order that holds its units the moment it is placed, wherever it came from.
How Manifold handles it
Manifold keeps one stock record per SKU per location. Every order — from Shopify, from the wholesale desk, from a rep's tablet — reserves its units when it is placed, and what each channel may sell is what is on hand less what orders already hold.
One count, per location
A SKU's page shows on hand, reserved, available, incoming and projected at every site, side by side.
Every order holds its units
Place a wholesale order and its lines are allocated straight away; the SKU's reserved figure goes up and available comes down.
Your store hears it in seconds
Manifold pushes the new available figure to each linked Shopify location within a few seconds of the change, and checks every store again every five minutes.
Short orders wait or split
When stock runs out, the order waits for it or ships what is there and backorders the rest — your choice in Settings › Workflow.
What you can check
Available is one sum
On hand at sellable locations, less what orders hold. The same figure Manifold shows you is the figure it pushes to Shopify.
Stock levels, explained →No blind overwrites
Each push to Shopify checks the store's figure has not moved since Manifold last read it; if a sale landed in between, it reads again and recomputes.
How channels sync →Kits sell what their parts make
A bundle's available figure is the fewest whole kits its parts can make, so selling the parts loose never oversells the kit.
Kits and bundles →Questions people ask
- Does Manifold replace Shopify's stock count?
- Manifold becomes the record and Shopify shows what Manifold says is available at each linked location. Orders taken in Shopify come into Manifold and reserve their units like any other.
- Can I hold back stock for one channel?
- Not as a buffer per channel. What Manifold does is route each order to a location and push each Shopify location only the stock of the Manifold location it is linked to, so stock you keep at a site that no store sells from stays off the store.
- What happens when two orders want the last unit?
- The first order placed reserves it. The next one waits for stock or ships what it can and backorders the rest, depending on your workflow setting, and the store already shows zero.
- Do I have to stop using what I have now?
- No. Every new Manifold business starts read-only: orders come in, imports run and your team works in Manifold in full, but nothing goes out — no stock to your store, no email to customers — until an owner goes live. Run it beside your paper and spreadsheets until you trust it.
See it on your own products.
Nothing changes until you say so.
Connect your Shopify store or bring a spreadsheet, and your own products, stock and orders are in Manifold the same day. Every new business starts read-only: your team can work in it in full while nothing goes out — no stock to your store, no email to customers — until an owner goes live. Free for 60 days.
Other problems we fix
Running a second warehouse or site without losing track
A second warehouse, shop or unit without losing track: stock per site, transfers tracked in transit, orders routed to the site that can fill them.
Wholesale orders going out wrong: prices, terms and partial shipments
Trade customers charged retail, unpaid orders shipped, half-orders lost: give each customer its own price list and terms, and ship what's there.
Your stocktake never reconciles
A stocktake that ends in a spreadsheet nobody trusts: count by location, see each variance before you complete, and post the differences with their cost.