Backorders — taking orders even when stock is at zero — are a handy way to keep selling a popular item without going dark. But once you have several warehouses or shops, things get complicated in a hurry. Which location is allowed to sell while out of stock, and which one actually absorbs the backordered demand that comes in? Leave that vague and both your promised dates and your quantities fall apart quickly.
This time we sort out how to think about backorders across multiple locations. In Shopify, inventory is tracked per location, and the available quantity for the same product moves independently at each location. That is exactly why both the permission to oversell and the absorbing of backordered demand should be designed deliberately, per location.
Deciding Per-Location Whether to Sell While Out of Stock
In Shopify you can choose, per product, to ‟continue selling when out of stock.” But that setting is a per-product (per-variant) behavior, while the inventory itself is counted per location. So when you decide to sell while out of stock, unless you are also clear about which location will ultimately fulfill that order, you lose track of where the backordered units are piling up.
Start by deciding which locations are allowed to backorder. Rather than letting every location oversell, it is realistic to limit it to the sites where replenishment is predictable. Sorting by the criteria below keeps things tidy.
- Central warehouse: stable supply line, so it can absorb backorders comfortably
- Store location: a backorder you cannot hand over on the spot causes confusion — sell from real stock only as a rule
- Dropship / supplier site: good for backorders if you can read the supplier’s stock
- Pop-up or temporary site: safest to take no backorders and settle on real stock alone
Which Warehouse Absorbs the Backorder
The tricky part of backorders is that the permission to ‟sell while out of stock” and ‟which location actually ships the order” are two different things. Shopify assigns orders to a location and fulfills from there, but a backordered order assigned to a location with zero stock remains as an unfulfilled commitment waiting on a stock-in. Without a clear absorbing location, backorders tend to dangle across several warehouses.
Our recommendation is to designate a single ‟backorder location” that absorbs the demand. Concentrate the permission to oversell at that one location, and let the others sell only within their real stock. That way every backordered unit gathers in one place, and when stock arrives you simply ship from there in order — a clean, simple flow.
Whether to Hold Backordered Units as a Negative
Once the absorbing location is set, decide how to represent the backordered units in the sheet. There are broadly two ways. One is to let the absorbing location’s quantity go negative and read ‟minus 3 means three units on backorder.” The other is to floor the quantity at zero and track the backorder count in a separate column. The latter causes fewer accidents and plays nicely with zero-out routines, so for most stores we recommend the separate-column approach.
Weaving Expected Stock-Ins Into the Sheet
The key to running backorders safely is keeping expected stock-ins visible in your master Google Sheet. Beyond simply accepting backorders, if you can manage ‟when, to which location, and how many” in one table, the basis for your delivery dates becomes clear. A column layout like the following is easy to operate.
- 01Column A: SKU
- 02Column B: real stock at the absorbing location (floored at zero)
- 03Column C: backorders taken (backorder count)
- 04Column D: expected stock-in quantity Column E: expected stock-in date
- 05Column F: published quantity (real stock plus incoming minus backorder count, by formula)
With this in place, you can compute ‟how many more backorders can I accept” while factoring in incoming stock. You can also keep selling only the items whose stock-in date is near and stop those whose date is far off — all decided right in the sheet. Sync Master supports multiple locations, so it can write a published quantity like column F straight into the on-hand quantity of the absorbing location.
Backorders Versus Automatic Zeroing
Watch out here for a clash with a ‟zero-out” routine that automatically sets to zero any product missing from the sheet. If you accidentally delete a backordered product from the sheet, or drop the incoming row, the quantity you worked to backorder gets overwritten with zero and selling stops. Make it a firm rule never to remove a backordered row until the stock-in is complete.
Before a real sync, the connection test lets you confirm the column-to-location mapping, so it is reassuring to eyeball once — before any write — that the published quantity in column F is heading to the absorbing location. That prevents the accident of mis-routing a negative or a backordered figure to the wrong warehouse.
Keeping the Customer’s Delivery Estimate From Falling Apart
Finally, how you present it to the customer. The scariest thing about a backorder is letting a ‟you bought it but we do not know when it ships” state sit unattended. If you hold the expected stock-in date in the sheet, reflect it on the product page and order confirmation, and say it concretely: ‟Backordered: expected to ship around the 10th.” And if the date looks like it will slip, just reach out early — that alone protects trust enormously.
Per-location backorders become far easier to handle once you nail three things: decide up front on a single absorbing location, make incoming stock visible in the sheet, and keep it from clashing with zeroing. Start by concentrating the backorders of your hero products at one location. It is the shortcut to reducing both the lost sales of stockouts and the chaos of broken delivery promises.