Stock can be on order without being close to your warehouse. Shopify purchase order reports now give merchants a clearer way to inspect that gap, before a replenishment delay becomes a stockout or another unnecessary supplier order. The useful payoff is a weekly buying review that separates purchasing commitments from goods moving through receiving. Here’s how we’d use the new reports, what they don’t establish, and when a separate inventory system still earns its cost.
What changed in Shopify purchase order reports?
On October 6, 2026, Shopify announced purchase order reporting in Shopify Analytics, including the ability to review and export purchase order data. The release introduces these reports:
- Purchase order costs: ordered items, quantities, supplier costs, estimated taxes, and purchase order costs.
- Purchase order transfers: purchase orders followed through transfers, shipments, and receiving.
- Purchases on order: open, ordered purchase orders that don’t have linked transfers.
The Purchase Orders page also shows purchase orders, on-order purchase orders, total items ordered, acceptance rate, and shipments due soon. Before you turn any of those measures into a target, check its definition and reporting scope in your store.
Our view: the most useful addition is the distinction between an order placed and its downstream movement. A buyer can know that stock has been ordered while the warehouse has no reliable basis for planning its arrival. These reports give both teams a better starting point for that conversation.
Use Shopify purchase order reports to build an exception list
A purchase order records a request to buy goods from a supplier. It does not, by itself, establish that those goods have shipped or are available to sell. That sounds obvious until a merchandising meeting treats every incoming unit as equally dependable.
We’d start with Purchases on order. Shopify defines its scope as open, ordered purchase orders without linked transfers. That makes it a useful queue for investigation, but not a list of confirmed supplier failures. A missing transfer could reflect a normal early stage or an internal record that nobody updated.
For each relevant order, ask who owns the next action and what evidence supports the expected arrival date. Check the supplier correspondence against the order record. If the supplier says the shipment has left, investigate why the operational record doesn’t reflect that movement.
Prioritise exceptions by commercial exposure. An unlinked order for a slow seller can wait behind a replenishment needed for next week’s paid campaign. The report supplies the purchasing context; your sales and inventory data supply the urgency.
Give each report a different job
Purchase order costs: check commitments before approving another buy
Use the costs report to inspect quantities and supplier costs before placing repeat orders. Export the data when finance needs to compare it with invoices or a separate purchasing budget. The practical question is whether the next buy duplicates a commitment your team has already made.
Don’t treat purchase order cost as a complete landed-cost calculation. Shopify’s announcement lists supplier costs and estimated taxes, but it does not establish that every freight charge, duty, or receiving expense is included. Check what your records capture before using this report to calculate product margin.
Likewise, purchasing commitments and cash due this week are different measures. Payment terms and deposits affect cash timing. Finance should reconcile those separately rather than reading the report total as an immediate payment requirement.
Purchase order transfers: investigate where progress stopped
The transfers report follows purchase orders through transfers, shipments, and receiving. Use it to investigate the distance between the buying team’s expectation and the warehouse’s actual receipt.
A supplier’s dispatch message isn’t a completed receipt. If an order arrives in parts, check the relevant shipment and receiving records before assuming the full ordered quantity is ready for sale. Assign one person to resolve each discrepancy, with a date for the next update.
Purchases on order: challenge unsupported arrival assumptions
Use this report to find orders that still lack linked transfers. For each commercially urgent order, establish whether the supplier has confirmed fulfilment and whether your internal workflow is up to date.
Keep the resulting exception list short enough to act on. We’d record the purchase order reference, affected products, latest confirmed arrival information, and accountable owner. This can live in a shared working document initially. Another dashboard won’t help if nobody follows up.
A worked example: 300 ordered units aren’t 300 available units
Consider a hypothetical homewares merchant that orders 300 ceramic mugs for a promotion. The supplier dispatches 180 units first; the remaining 120 are due later. The warehouse receives 170 intact mugs and sets aside 10 damaged units.
The original order quantity remains useful for purchasing reconciliation. It is a poor standalone basis for the promotion’s stock promise.
The buyer should establish the timing of the remaining 120 units. The warehouse should record the received quantity and resolve the damaged stock according to the store’s inventory process. Merchandising should plan against verified sellable availability, with a separate decision about any future inbound stock.
Shopify’s new reports can support this investigation. They don’t remove the need to inspect inventory availability or document damage correctly. If your team skips that work, a more detailed report will simply describe an unreliable process more clearly.
Receiving is not the same as being able to find stock
A separate October 6 article from Total Retail examines the gap between accurate inventory counts and associates finding the goods. That is a useful limit to keep in mind here: purchasing visibility doesn’t solve physical stock location.
For a Shopify merchant, the next question after receipt is whether staff can locate and pick the item. A quantity can be correct while the product sits in an unmarked overflow area. Purchase order reporting cannot substitute for a disciplined put-away process.
Walk one recently received product through your operation. Compare the receipt record with its physical location, then ask someone who didn’t receive it to find it. If that fails, fix the location workflow before buying more reporting software.
When native reporting is enough, and when it isn’t
Start with the native reports if your purchase orders already live in Shopify and your main problem is visibility. They offer a sensible way to inspect the existing records without first commissioning a separate reporting integration.
Be more cautious if another system owns purchasing. If your ERP holds the authoritative orders while Shopify receives only selected updates, establish what reaches Shopify and when. A report can be internally consistent yet incomplete for the business.
A dedicated inventory platform or warehouse management system deserves evaluation when your requirements include detailed bin locations or lot traceability. Those capabilities are not established by this reporting announcement. Ask vendors to demonstrate your actual receiving exceptions rather than a clean, full-delivery example.
Our recommendation is to postpone an app purchase until you can name the missing capability. “We need better inventory” is too broad to select software. “Our team cannot locate partial receipts across overflow bins” gives you something concrete to test.
Run a weekly review that ends with decisions
Use a 30-minute weekly meeting as a starting routine, not a promised optimum. Bring purchasing and warehouse ownership together; involve finance when commitments or invoice discrepancies need attention.
- Before the meeting: inspect the reports and flag orders that threaten near-term availability or purchasing budgets.
- During the review: compare flagged records with supplier confirmations and receiving evidence. Separate supplier delays from internal data gaps.
- Before closing: assign an owner and next action to every unresolved exception. Record any changed availability assumption for merchandising.
- The following week: check whether the previous actions happened before adding new items.
Track unresolved exceptions and how long they remain open. Define the measure consistently. Don’t declare success because the list shrank if somebody merely closed records without resolving the underlying shortage.
Check the release before building around it
Shopify maintains a separate developer changelog for platform changes. That distinction matters if you want to automate this workflow: a merchant-facing reporting release does not, by itself, confirm an equivalent API field or integration capability.
First verify the reports in your own admin and inspect an export. Have your developer check the relevant documentation before promising an automated supplier-chasing workflow. Start with a manual review of a few known orders, including a partial receipt, and confirm that the results match operational reality.
Takeaways
- Use Purchases on order to investigate open orders without linked transfers, not to label every order late.
- Keep purchasing commitments separate from landed cost and payment timing.
- Check physical receiving and sellable availability before making stock promises.
- Build a weekly exception review before adding another inventory tool.
Sources
- Your Inventory Count is Accurate. So Why Can’t Anyone Find the Stock?
- Analyze purchase orders in Shopify Analytics
- Recent changes to Shopify's platform
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Frequently asked questions
What are the new Shopify purchase order reports?
Shopify announced Purchase order costs, Purchase order transfers, and Purchases on order on October 6, 2026. Merchants can review and export purchase order data in Shopify Analytics.
What does Shopify’s Purchases on order report show?
It shows open, ordered purchase orders that do not have linked transfers. An order appearing in this report is not necessarily late; it may be at an early stage or need an internal record update.
Do Shopify purchase order costs equal landed cost?
Not necessarily. The announcement lists supplier costs and estimated taxes but does not establish that all freight, duties, and receiving expenses are included. Check your cost records before using the total for margin calculations.
Can Shopify purchase order reports replace a warehouse management system?
They support purchasing and receiving visibility. This release does not establish warehouse capabilities such as detailed bin locations or lot traceability. Evaluate a separate system against the specific operational capabilities you need.
