Shopify stock counts now wait for a review. Set up who counts and who approves before November

What changed

On October 20, 2026, Shopify added stock counts to the admin. You can schedule a count, assign it to staff, and have them count by scanning barcodes or typing quantities, either in the admin or in Shopify POS. Several people can count at the same time without overwriting each other, and you can see who recorded each number.

Then comes the part that matters most. Before any stock level changes, someone reviews the variances, meaning the differences between what Shopify thought you had and what people counted, and approves the count. Shopify also added separate permissions for counting and for reviewing and approving.

Here's an illustrative picture of the old way going wrong. Two people count the stockroom on paper. One counts a shelf of candles and writes 24. The other, not knowing, counts the same shelf from the other side and writes 22. Whoever types the numbers in later enters both, or the wrong one, and nobody can say afterwards who counted what. The new setup fixes each of those problems: assigned sections, counts that don't overwrite each other, a name next to every number and a review before anything changes.

If your current process is a clipboard, a spreadsheet and someone typing numbers back into Shopify late at night, this replaces the riskiest step. The review step is the feature. Scanning faster only helps if someone looks at what changed.

Setting one: who counts

Start with staff permissions. Give the counting permission to the people who'll walk the shelves: store staff, warehouse staff, whoever knows the stockroom. They don't need to approve anything.

If you count in a shop, POS is the obvious tool, since staff already have it on a device. In a back room or warehouse, the admin on a phone or tablet with barcode scanning may suit better. Either way, check before the first count that the items you'll count actually have barcodes in Shopify. If some don't, decide whether to add them now or count those items by typing quantities.

When you create a count, assign it to specific people. Splitting a count by area, such as front of shop, stockroom shelves A to D and overflow, keeps people from counting the same shelf twice and makes it easy to see where a variance came from.

Setting two: who approves

Give the review and approve permission to a small number of people, ideally one or two, and keep them separate from the people counting where you can. In a very small store that may be impossible, and that's fine. The point is that someone looks at the differences with fresh eyes before they become your stock levels.

The approver should know the business well enough to spot a number that doesn't make sense. Forty units of a product you only ever stock ten of is a typo, a mis-scanned barcode or a box in the wrong place. Approving it means your store will happily sell thirty things you don't have.

Keep the approver's eye on the record of who counted what, too. If one person's numbers are off far more often than everyone else's, that's a training conversation, or a sign their section is the messy one, not a reason for blame.

Agree, before the count, what the approver does with a variance they don't trust. The usual answer is a recount of that item by a different person, not a guess.

Setting three: what counts as a big difference

Decide your own thresholds before the count, so the approver isn't making them up at the end of a long day. Here's an illustrative starting point for a small store; adjust it to your products and margins.

Small differences on low-value items. A unit or two off on cheap, fast-moving stock: approve and move on.

Any difference on high-value items. One missing piece of expensive stock: recount before approving, and ask where it might be.

Large differences anywhere. A big gap in either direction: recount by someone else. Big surpluses matter as much as shortfalls, because they usually mean a mistake somewhere else in your records.

Items with a history. Products that were off last time too: recount, and look for the cause, like a bundle that isn't set up to reduce stock properly, or returns being restocked without being checked.

Write these down in a couple of lines and give them to whoever approves. Revisit them after the first two or three counts, once you've seen what normal looks like in your store.

Setting four: when to count

Counting while orders are still being picked makes numbers drift. An item picked for an order between the count and the approval can look like a shortfall. Count when the shop is closed or quiet, or pause picking in the area being counted, and approve promptly.

Timing across the year matters too. A full count before the holiday rush gives you a clean starting point, and smaller cycle counts during November and December, a few products at a time, keep it clean. Start with your bestsellers and anything expensive, since those are the items where a wrong number costs you most.

After each count, spend ten minutes on the biggest variances you approved. Write down the cause where you found one. Over a few counts, those notes tell you whether your problem is miscounting, theft, unrecorded damage or a setup issue in Shopify, and each of those has a different fix.

If your stock numbers have been quietly drifting for a while, our note on inventory truth drift covers how to find out why.

Put this into practice

This week: set up the two permissions, decide your recount thresholds, and check barcodes on the products you'll count first. Next week: run a small test count of one shelf or one category, with one person counting and another approving, and see how long it takes. Before November: schedule a full count at a quiet time, then plan cycle counts for your bestsellers through the holidays.

If you're running stock across several locations, apps and a warehouse, and want counting, receiving and fulfillment to line up, that's part of our fulfillment operations work. Talk to us.

Related work: Paddle8.