Overview
Inventory by Location is a useful feature for any business that has inventory spread across multiple locations. IBL allows businesses to track and manage individual inventory for different locations, enabling a whole host of possibilities for business and consumer use. In this article, we'll talk about some of the specific requirements that are in play for integrations between Shopify and RICS when using inventory by location.
Why Use Inventory by Location?
Being able to track inventory totals for your different locations makes it possible to offer a variety of popular consumer-demanded services, like in-store pickup, local delivery integrations, and more. The advent of these features has made inventory by location a popular demand in e-commerce, leading to its widespread use. As with most popular features in the e-commerce world, every e-commerce platform and POS system handles inventory by location differently, leading to a variety of quirks in its implementation.
RICS and Shopify Requirements
When using Inventory by Location features with an RICS to Shopify integration, it's important to note how exactly Shopify and RICS handle this topic. When products are added to RICS, Modern Retail's integration typically sends that product data up to Shopify, so those products can be displayed on your website. However, RICS does not send inventory location records for products with no inventory across your stores. If that data doesn't get sent to Shopify, the product won't display, which is a problem.
Thankfully, this is an easy fix. When creating a new product (even custom products, or products intended for drop shipping), you can simply add an inventory record for the new product with a quantity of 0. This will result in RICS sending the product to Shopify, solving the problem.
If you have any additional questions on this topic, please feel free to contact us with a support request.