Why is my stock wrong since we moved to a 3PL?
Before the 3PL, your warehouse and your storefront shared a system, so the numbers agreed. Now they are two separate operations connected by a stock feed that updates on a delay, and every gap in that delay is a chance to oversell or short-pick an order. Reconciling it by hand every day is a tax, not a fix.
Why 3PL stock drifts from your storefront
The 3PL and your storefront never shared a system
Before the 3PL, stock lived in your own warehouse and your own software. Now it lives with a partner, feeding you counts through a feed or a portal, on their schedule.
Feeds update on a delay, sales do not wait
Most 3PL stock feeds refresh every few hours, not instantly. Every order that comes in during that window is a chance for Shopify to sell something that already left the shelf.
Damages, returns and holds vanish from the count
Stock damaged in the warehouse, held for quality checks or mid-return rarely makes it back into what the 3PL reports as available, so your storefront number is optimistic.
Someone becomes the daily reconciliation job
Without a system that owns both sides, checking the 3PL report against Shopify becomes a recurring manual task, and it grows every time you add a channel.
The 3PL feeds one system, not your storefront directly.
Warehouse counts, damages, holds and returns flow into a system you own, and that system pushes the correct available number out to Shopify and every other channel. There is no separate report to check against Shopify each morning, because there is only one number, and the 3PL is simply one of the places that updates it.
Odoo sits between your 3PL and your channels
We build the stock backend on Odoo, the open-source commerce ERP, and integrate your 3PL's feed directly into it alongside our own Shopify connector. Odoo becomes the one place damages, holds, returns and dispatches land, and the one place your storefront and any other channel reads available stock from.
We built this exact pattern for Gandys, a UK lifestyle brand fulfilling online orders through a 3PL across three Shopify stores, where automated 3PL stock sync replaced daily manual reconciliation entirely. If your reconciliation gap is really a fulfilment-status problem as much as a stock one, see how we connect a 3PL to Shopify and your accounts.
See how the pieces fit
Connect your 3PL to Shopify and accounts
How the integration itself is built, so stock and fulfilment status flow automatically.
Packaged commerce build
One system for your operation, from £20,000, live in 8 to 10 weeks.
Shopify overselling
Why a 3PL mismatch is one of the most common causes of an oversell.
Setting up the 3PL connection itself? See how we connect a 3PL to Shopify and your accounts →
Ready to fix your ops?
Book a free discovery call. We'll look at your current setup and tell you honestly whether Odoo is the right move and what it would involve.