Reference
What a stock control
system has to get right
If you sell through more than one channel or from more than one location, you already run stock control: the storefront, a spreadsheet, or both. It works until two of them disagree about how many you've got.
Fixing it starts with one decision: which system is allowed to be right when two disagree. Name it, and every other count follows from it. Leave it open, and the answer is whichever screen somebody checked last.
Stock is four numbers
When a spreadsheet, a storefront and a warehouse all say "stock: 12", they're often answering different questions. The gap between these four numbers is where every oversell, every stuck order and every argument about whose number is wrong comes from. A system that can't separate them can't be the one that's right.
On hand
Physically in the building, countable by a person standing in front of it. It's the only one of the four a stock take can verify, and the hardest to keep right, because it changes without anybody telling the software.
Committed
Promised to an order that hasn't shipped. It's still on the shelf, and it's no longer yours to sell. A system with no idea of committed stock oversells at exactly the moment it matters, because the shelf and the number agree while the promise is invisible.
Available
On hand minus committed, and the only number a sales channel should ever see. Publishing on hand to a storefront is a common configuration error, and it looks correct until a busy hour.
Incoming
On a purchase order with a date against it. Without it, replenishment is guesswork, and the same line gets ordered twice: once by the person watching the shelf and once by the person watching the report.
Multiply all four by every location and every channel, and that's the data model. Ask any product you're evaluating to show all four, per location, on one screen. Several can't, and that rules them out faster than any feature list. Where any of the stock is consigned, there's a fifth dimension, ownership, which sits apart from all four and which many systems have no field for.
Stock truth and the order promise are different jobs
They're often sold as one product, but they answer two questions, and knowing which one you're asking changes the shortlist. Buy for the wrong one and you get a system that's excellent at a problem you don't have.
A stock system owns the truth
What exists, where it is, which of the four states it's in, what it cost and what's on its way. It's the system of record: the one that's right when the others disagree, and the one a stock take is reconciled against.
You need one when more than one place holds stock, or more than one channel sells it, and no single system can currently answer "how many, where" without somebody joining two screens together.
An order system owns the promise
Which unit, from which location, to which customer, in what priority, and the order's state from placed to settled. It uses stock truth. It doesn't produce it.
You need one when orders arrive from more than one place, or when a single order can be fulfilled from more than one location and somebody has to decide which. The order-management reference is the other half of this.
The ledger sits downstream of both and answers a third question: what the stock was worth on a date that's passed. Why that number rightly differs from the other two is covered in accounting and stock.
Four questions that shorten the shortlist
Ask them in this order, because each one only matters if the previous answer held. None of them appears on a feature comparison, and a demo answers all four if you ask for the screen rather than the brochure.
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1 — Which system is nominated to be right?
The one that wins by rule when two disagree. If the answer is "it depends" or "we check both", nothing's been nominated, and buying software won't nominate it for you.
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2 — Can it show all four numbers, per location, in one screen?
On hand, committed, available, incoming. Ask to see it on a real multi-location catalogue rather than a demo dataset, and watch whether available is calculated or typed.
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3 — What happens when a SKU convention changes?
Barcodes get re-issued, suppliers rename, a range gets restructured. Whether that's one mapping edit or a week of spreadsheet work is the difference between a system you keep and one you replace in three years.
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4 — Who owns it on a Tuesday?
Every one of these needs a person who understands the mapping and notices when a feed stops. If nobody in the business will hold that, choose a simpler system or a supported one, and decide it before the contract rather than after.
Linnworks, Brightpearl, Cin7, Unleashed, Veeqo and Stok.ly sit in this category; Khaos Control and NetSuite answer it from inside an ERP. Each is set out below as its vendor publishes it. How each physically connects to Shopify Plus, and where each connection type breaks, is the systems reference.
The main systems, as their vendors describe them
What each one is, how it connects to Shopify, how it's priced and who it's built for, taken from each vendor's own site and its Shopify App Store listing in September 2026. Prices exclude VAT and belong to the vendor, so check their page before budgeting. Which one fits is decided by the four questions above.
Brightpearl
A retail operating system covering inventory, orders and accounting. Now part of Sage.
- Shopify
- App on the Shopify App Store. A Certified Shopify Partner.
- Pricing
- Bespoke pricing, quoted per business. No list price is published.
- Built for
- Scaling retailers
Cin7 Core
Inventory and order management, with manufacturing tools.
- Shopify
- App on the Shopify App Store.
- Pricing
- From US$349 a month (Standard), with Pro at US$599 and Advanced at US$1,199.
- Built for
- Small businesses up to high-volume operations
Cin7 Omni
Customisable inventory management for larger operations.
- Shopify
- App on the Shopify App Store.
- Pricing
- Quoted on request.
- Built for
- Enterprises
Khaos Control
ERP covering order management, stock control and despatch.
- Shopify
- Shopify integration listed on Khaos Control's own site.
- Pricing
- Not published.
- Built for
- Complex, growing multichannel businesses
Linnworks
Order and inventory management in one platform.
- Shopify
- App on the Shopify App Store, marked Built for Shopify.
- Pricing
- Priced on order volume rather than revenue, on request.
- Built for
- Fast-growing multichannel retailers
Stok.ly (affiliate)
Order-management-led, inventory-centric ERP, including warehouse and manufacturing.
- Shopify
- App on the Shopify App Store.
- Pricing
- From £299.99 a month (Lite Retail), up to Enterprise Cloud ERP from £2,999.99.
- Built for
- Multi-location retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers
Unleashed
Inventory management for product businesses.
- Shopify
- App on the Shopify App Store.
- Pricing
- From £269 a month (Core), plus a Pro plan.
- Built for
- Product-based businesses
Veeqo
Shipping and inventory for multichannel sellers.
- Shopify
- App on the Shopify App Store.
- Pricing
- Shipping is free. Inventory from US$19 a month, High Volume from US$350.
- Built for
- Multichannel sellers of any size
StoreBuilder Ltd earns referral commission from Shopify and holds an affiliate account with Stok.ly. No other vendor named on this page pays us. Commercial relationships
When the storefront is already enough
One location, one sales channel, and a catalogue where someone still knows most of the lines: Shopify's own inventory is a stock control system, and a competent one. A second system only adds a second number to reconcile.
The threshold is the first moment two places hold the same product, or two channels sell it. That's when "how many" stops having one answer, and a nomination gets made whether or not anybody makes it on purpose.
If it's the symptom that brought you here (overselling, a second location making things worse, or the WMS-versus-3PL decision), the operations page covers the diagnosis.
Stock and fulfilmentChoosing the stock system
The right product holds committed stock per location, survives a channel going down mid-sync, and costs what it should to run. Which product does that for you depends on the four numbers above.
We choose against those numbers, not a feature grid, and we plan moving your stock truth into it as part of the same piece of work.
The systems review starts there: which system is nominated today, whether available is calculated or typed, and how many of the four numbers your business can produce now.
Start the systems reviewTell us what you need
What the systems are doing now, and what you need them to do. We'll tell you whether it's a platform problem or something cheaper.