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Inventory Sync Issues

Swift POS reads and writes inventory through the Shopify GraphQL Admin API. This page covers common synchronization issues.

Stock Not Updating After a Sale

Symptoms: After completing an order, the product still shows the old stock quantity.

Explanation: Shopify's API has a propagation delay of up to 30 seconds after an inventory change. The POS may show stale data briefly.

Solutions:

  1. Wait 30 seconds and refresh the page
  2. Check Shopify admin -- if the inventory is correct in Shopify admin, the POS will catch up on the next data fetch
  3. Verify the order was placed -- check the Orders page to confirm the order completed successfully

Transfer Quantities Wrong

Symptoms: After completing a transfer, the quantities at the source or destination do not match expectations.

Solutions:

  1. Check the transfer details -- review the transfer record to see what quantities were sent and received
  2. Partial receiving -- if a transfer was partially received, the remaining quantity may still be "in transit"
  3. Verify both locations -- check stock at both the source and destination locations in the multi-location view
  4. API propagation -- wait 30 seconds and refresh if you just completed the transfer

Audit Discrepancies

Symptoms: Inventory audit shows discrepancies between system count and physical count.

Solutions:

  1. Recount -- the most common cause of discrepancies is miscounting. Recount the flagged items
  2. Check recent orders -- orders placed during the audit may have changed quantities
  3. Check pending transfers -- stock in transit may not be reflected in available quantities
  4. Use blind count mode -- if discrepancies are consistently zero, staff may be influenced by system quantities. Blind count eliminates this bias

Products Missing from Inventory

Symptoms: A product exists in Shopify but does not appear in the POS inventory view.

Solutions:

  1. Check product status -- the product must be Active in Shopify (not Draft or Archived)
  2. Check inventory tracking -- the product must have inventory tracking enabled in Shopify
  3. Check location stocking -- the product must be stocked at the current POS location. Go to the product in Shopify admin and ensure the location is enabled under "Inventory"
  4. Pagination -- Swift POS supports up to 2500 products via pagination. If your catalog is larger, some products may load on later pages
tip

If a product shows "Not stocked" in the POS, it means inventory tracking is not enabled for that product at your current location. Enable it in Shopify admin under the product's inventory settings.

Online vs. POS Inventory Mismatch

Both the online store and POS share the same Shopify inventory. If numbers differ:

  • An order may have been placed on one channel but not yet reflected on the other (API delay)
  • A third-party app may have modified inventory
  • A manual adjustment may have been made in Shopify admin

All channels share the same pool -- there is no separate POS inventory.