How to Receive Inventory in Shopify, and What to Do When a Delivery Doesn't Match the PO

By Vladislav Gerasimchuk, founder of Extensions Market, which builds EZstock

A delivery arrives, and Shopify needs to know about it. Receiving is the step where boxes on the floor become stock you can sell: you count what came, compare it with the purchase order, and add the good units at the right location. Shopify changed how this works in June 2026, when purchase orders started creating inventory transfers for receiving. This guide covers the built-in flow, a receiving routine for the stockroom, and what to record when the delivery doesn't match the order.

How does receiving work in Shopify now?

Shopify's changelog for June 22, 2026 says purchase orders now create transfers when it's time to receive. The purchase order keeps the record of what you ordered and what it cost. The transfer tracks the stock as it moves in, and you can receive it in the admin or in POS, wherever the shipment arrives.

The same update lets one transfer hold several shipments, so you can see what's been received and what's still outstanding. Purchase orders also fill in with your previous purchase prices or the product's cost per item, and you can import purchase order lines from a CSV file.

The built-in flow, as Shopify's help center describes it:

1. Open the purchase order and click Create transfer. Pick the location the stock is going to. Shopify says the transfer "is pre-populated with the same supplier, line items, and quantities as the purchase order."
2. Wait for the shipment. Each purchase order supports one linked transfer at a time, and a supplier that ships in several boxes or several trucks can be received one shipment at a time.
3. Open the transfer and click Receive items. You'll find it under Products, then Transfers.
4. Set an action for each item. Accept, reject or cancel each quantity, or use Accept all. You can record more than one action for the same item and add a note to explain it.
5. Save. The transfer stays In progress until every unit is accounted for, then changes to Transferred.

Shopify's help pages describe the three actions this way. Accepted: "The inventory becomes available at the destination location." Rejected: "The inventory is recorded on the transfer, and doesn't add to the available quantity at any location." Canceled: "The inventory is removed instead of being returned to a location, because a purchase order's origin is a supplier."

Two details save trouble later. If a product isn't stocked at the destination yet, Shopify asks whether to Stock and fulfill it there or choose Not now and record the quantity to activate later. And if you get a count wrong, you can open the shipment's menu, click Manage received items, and correct it.

Check the delivery before you count a single unit

Start with the paperwork and the outside of the boxes. Four documents should agree: your purchase order, the supplier's packing slip, the invoice when it comes, and the carrier's delivery receipt for the number of cartons. When they disagree, you want to find out at the door, while the driver is still there.

• Count the cartons before you sign. If the receipt says 6 boxes and 5 arrived, write that on the receipt.
• Look for outside damage. Crushed corners, wet cardboard and torn tape get a photo and a note on the delivery receipt.
• Find the PO number. The packing slip should name your purchase order. If it doesn't, match it by supplier and date before you open anything.
• Open the boxes soon. Suppliers and carriers set time limits for damage and shortage claims, so check yours and open deliveries well inside them.

None of this needs software. A clipboard and a phone camera are enough. Write every problem down while you can still prove it.

A receiving routine, step by step

The same seven steps work for a garage stockroom and a small warehouse. The order matters: count first, record second, shelve last, so nothing reaches the shelf without being counted.

1. Match the delivery to its purchase order. Pull up the PO on a screen or print it, so you count against what you ordered. The packing slip only shows what the supplier thinks it sent.
2. Count or scan every line by variant. Ten T-shirts are not ten T-shirts until you know how many of each size and color came.
3. Compare line by line. Mark each line as matching, short, extra, damaged or wrong item.
4. Record the receipt. Accept the good units at the location where they'll sit, reject what can't be sold, and cancel what was never shipped.
5. Put the stock away. Shelve each product where it lives and label anything that needs a barcode.
6. Check the cost. Compare the invoice price with the PO price, and add freight and duties if they belong in the product's cost.
7. Tell the supplier about every difference the same day. One email with the PO number, the lines and the photos.

Stock in Shopify changes at step 4, so do it before anything goes on a shelf. A box that gets shelved before it's received leaves Shopify showing fewer units than you have, and that can trigger a reorder you don't need. Our guide to the Shopify inventory audit covers how to find and fix counts that have already drifted.

What should you do when the delivery doesn't match the PO?

Record what arrived, then sort out the difference with the supplier. Shopify's transfer has a separate action for each case: accept what you'll sell, reject what arrived but can't be sold, and cancel units that were never shipped. Add a note on each line, so the record explains itself months later.

Notes turn a receipt into evidence. "10 accepted, 2 rejected: crushed in transit, photos sent to the supplier on Oct 21" is something anyone on your team can follow six months later, when the credit note arrives and nobody remembers why.

Short shipments deserve one extra check. A unit that the supplier will send next week is still coming, so leave it open on the transfer. A unit the supplier has dropped from the order is gone, so cancel it. Mixing the two up leaves your next reorder too small or too big. If the missing units are a bestseller, our guide on continue selling when out of stock covers whether to keep selling while you wait.

Should damaged units go back into stock?

Not as stock you can sell. Shopify's receiving page says rejected inventory "is recorded on the transfer, and doesn't add to the available quantity at any location." If you'd rather keep damaged units in your counts while you wait for a credit or a return pickup, accept them and then move them to Unavailable.

Shopify's inventory states page explains the difference. On hand "is made up of the total of your Committed, Unavailable, and Available inventory." Unavailable covers "units set aside by apps or held for other reasons, such as damaged, quality control, or safety stock." Those units are stocked at your location but can't be sold, and Shopify says "you can also move Available items to Unavailable by adjusting inventory quantities."

Which one to pick depends on where the units end up:

• Reject when the units go straight back to the supplier or into the bin, and the supplier is crediting you. They never touch your stock.
• Accept, then mark Unavailable when the units will sit on your shelf for a while, waiting for an inspection, a pickup or a decision. Your on-hand count matches what's physically there.

Either way, keep the photos with the order. Damage recorded on the day it arrived, with photos, is much easier to claim.

How do you receive a partial delivery?

Receive what came today and leave the rest open. Shopify's help center says "if some quantities are still outstanding, then the transfer remains In progress until you account for the rest," and a supplier that ships in several shipments can be received "each shipment individually as it arrives."

Don't hold a delivery back until the full order lands. Units sitting in a box aren't for sale, and a product can sell out online while its restock waits in the back room. Receive the first shipment, put it on sale, and receive the next one when it arrives.

When the supplier tells you the rest won't ship, cancel the remaining units so the order closes and your numbers stop counting stock that's never coming. Then place a new order if you still need it. Our guide to creating purchase orders in Shopify covers the order side, and the guide to supplier lead times and minimum order quantities covers why some suppliers split shipments in the first place.

Can you scan barcodes when receiving?

Yes. Shopify's receiving page says you can receive items "manually, or you can use a barcode scanner." Shopify's June 2026 inventory update also lets staff receive supplier shipments in POS, and its blog post says a whole shipment can be received with one barcode scan.

Scanning only works when each variant has a barcode saved in Shopify that matches the label on the unit. Before your first scanned delivery, scan a few units straight from the shelf and check that each one finds the right variant. A variant with no barcode, or a label your supplier printed with a different code, slows the whole delivery down while someone types it in.

Scanning beats typing for two reasons. It's faster on a big delivery, and it counts by variant, so a box of mixed sizes gets counted as Small, Medium and Large instead of as one number.

What happens to cost when you receive?

Receiving is where the price you paid meets the cost Shopify uses for profit. Shopify's profit reports include only "products and variants that had cost recorded at the time they were sold," and cost per item is one stored number for each variant. On the transfer, Shopify records cost adjustments such as shipping and customs duties per shipment, with a cost summary next to the agreed PO cost.

What Shopify's help pages don't describe is a new average cost per item after a delivery at a different price. In a Shopify Community thread about average costing, merchants and app makers say Shopify keeps one cost per item and doesn't calculate an average when stock is received. If a supplier changed the price, check the product's cost after the delivery, or every sale from that stock reports the wrong margin.

The math for keeping that number right is in our guide to weighted average cost in Shopify, with worked examples and the rules for freight and duties. For the bigger picture on cost data, see Shopify cost price tracking and COGS.

Where EZstock fits

Shopify's built-in receiving covers a lot: purchase orders, suppliers, transfers, accept and reject, barcode scanning and POS. EZstock adds the planning around it. I build EZstock, so take this section as the maker's view.

• On the Growth plan, receiving updates Shopify stock at the location you pick. On Free and Starter, receiving records what arrived in EZstock without changing Shopify.
• Partial receipts move a purchase order to Partial, and to Received once everything has come in.
• Barcode scanning works with a USB or Bluetooth handheld scanner, or the phone camera in the Shopify mobile app, matched by barcode with the SKU as a fallback (Growth).
• Bin locations: save the shelf each product goes on once, and the receive screen shows it on every delivery. A PO can be sorted in shelf order (Growth).
• On Growth, receiving also writes Shopify's cost per item. A setting decides whether it's the price on the PO or the average of your stock and the new units, and the PO's shipping and other charges can be spread into the unit cost.

Before the delivery, EZstock also works out days of stock left from your own sales (Growth), suggests an order for each supplier, and emails the purchase order to the supplier as a PDF. Suppliers don't need an account. Every install gets 14 days of every feature with no credit card, so you can receive a real delivery with Growth before deciding on a plan. The setup guide walks through the first purchase order, and the live demo runs with sample data and no install.

If you used to receive through Stocky, download its purchase order report before the read-only export ends, around November 29, 2026. EZstock rebuilds your suppliers, costs and PO history from that one file. Our Stocky migration guide has the steps.