Inventory across shop and webshop: how to keep it adding up

If you sell both in a physical shop and online, you probably know the frustration: a customer orders something online that just sold in the shop, or your stock count is wildly off at the end of the month. The cause is almost always the same — two systems each keeping their own inventory. The solution is one inventory as the single truth.

The problem: two truths

Whoever runs the shop register separately from the webshop effectively has two separate ledgers of the same products. Sell something over the counter and the webshop doesn't know. Sell something online and the shop only sees it when someone adjusts it by hand. The result: overselling, disappointed customers and hours of work to get everything to add up again.

The solution: one system, one inventory

With Shopify, your webshop and Shopify POS run on the same inventory. Every sale — whether at the register or online — deducts in real time from that same counter. Receive new stock and you book it once and it's correct everywhere. No double admin, no manual retyping.

That's the strongest argument for putting shop and webshop on one platform: not the nice website, but the fact that your inventory finally adds up on its own.

Working with multiple locations

If you have multiple sales points — say two shops, or a shop plus a stockroom — you can track in Shopify what's where, per location. You see in one overview what's available, what's incoming and what's already reserved for an order. So you can, for example, have an online order picked up at the shop that actually has the product on the shelf.

What it gives you

Well-organised inventory management means, in practice:

• No more overselling: what's gone is gone online too.
• Less manual work: you book new stock once instead of in two systems.
• Better overview: you see at a glance what's across all your locations.
• Smarter choices: reports show what sells well, so you buy more deliberately.

What to watch out for

Setting up one inventory isn't a switch you flip. It needs a clean start: correct opening stock, clear product variants (sizes, colours) and clear agreements on who books what in. That's exactly where it often goes wrong if you do it as an afterthought. A thoughtful setup at the start saves you a lot of headaches later.

How does Kattenberg 118 do this?

Kattenberg 118 is a web studio in Borgerhout. Jonas ran a shop with a webshop himself for years and knows the chaos of stock that doesn't add up — it was one of the reasons to switch to Shopify. We set up your inventory so shop and webshop form one whole, with correct opening stock and clear variants, and we train your team so it stays accurate.

We don't sell magic guarantees or a fixed price on a web page, because it depends on your number of products, variants and locations. We do give an honest estimate after a short conversation. Is your stock constantly out of sync? Get in touch — and we'll look at how to get it adding up.