Use ShipStation’s internal inventory tools to track stock levels and keep your shipping operations organized. This article will guide you through how to set up inventory warehouses, link them to Ship From Locations, and manage your product stock within ShipStation.
ShipStation Inventory includes a variety of features to help you tailor your shipping and inventory workflow, such as:
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Inventory Locations on Packing Slips - Make it easier to locate items during picking and packing.
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Lot Tracking - Track expiration dates and automatically allocate lots to orders using FIFO allocation.
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Inventory Sync - Keep stock levels up to date across select order sources.
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Reorder Thresholds - Get alerts when stock drops below a set level.
Set up internal inventory in ShipStation and start tracking your stock levels.
For ShipStation to track your stock levels, you need to create at least one Inventory Warehouse and link it as an Inventory source to one of your Ship From Locations. Think of this as the physical location where you store your inventory.
You can also configure your Inventory Warehouse to mirror your actual warehouse layout (for example, if your warehouse is separated into aisles, rows, and bins). By adding Locations, you can have ShipStation show specifically where each item is located (for example, Toy A is located in B-24-7).
Ship From Location Requirement
To link a Ship From Location, you’ll first need to create a Ship From Location.
A Ship From Location includes:
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The shipment origin address
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The return address
This information is required to receive accurate rates from shipping carriers.
To link the Inventory Warehouse as the Inventory Source to a Ship From Location:
There are two ways to confirm that your Shipped From Location is linked.
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Go to Settings > Inventory Management > Inventory Warehouses, and look for a checkmark in the Linked to Ship From column. This checkmark indicates that the warehouse is linked to a Ship From Location.
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Go to Settings > Inventory Management > Inventory Warehouses. Click the Actions menu next to the warehouse, then click Edit. You’ll see a list of all Linked Ship From Locations that use this Inventory Warehouse as an inventory source.
Once your internal inventory is set up, ShipStation provides tools to help you track, organize, and maintain accurate stock levels. This section covers how to manage your inventory settings to enable key features, update stock counts, and optimize your warehouse layout to support efficient order fulfillment.
Access general inventory settings by going to: Settings > Inventory Management > Inventory Settings.
These settings control how ShipStation handles inventory behavior across your account.
General Configuration Settings
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Handling Out-of-Stock or Unknown Inventory Levels: Choose how ShipStation should respond when an order includes items that are either out of stock or have an unknown stock level (e.g., Allow the shipment as usual, Allow with Warning, Block the shipment entirely).
Blocking a shipment will prevent ShipStation from generating a label for any order that contains an out-of-stock item.
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Shipping From a Location That Does Not Track Inventory: If you ship from a warehouse or location that does not track inventory, you can have ShipStation display a warning. This warning will let you know that the product's inventory count will not be adjusted.
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Low Stock Alerts: Enable alerts when a product’s inventory falls below a threshold you define. You can also override this global setting by specifying a custom Reorder Threshold on individual products.
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Inventory Tracking Toggle: If Enable Inventory Tracking is turned off, ShipStation will ignore all inventory settings and stock levels across the platform.
ShipStation offers additional tools to help you manage your inventory more effectively—see the sections below for advanced options.
Before ShipStation can track inventory as you ship, you’ll need to set your initial stock counts. The best way to do this is by uploading a CSV file formatted with your stock levels and inventory locations.
To learn more, visit Set Your Initial Stock Counts.
To have ShipStation automatically deduct stock as you ship orders, you’ll need to enable inventory tracking for your products. You can turn this setting on either before or after entering your initial stock levels.
To enable Inventory Tracking:
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Click Edit in Configurations.
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Click the Allow Inventory Tracking toggle to turn on inventory tracking.
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Click Save Changes.
Disable Inventory Tracking: To pause inventory tracking and clear any allocated orders, toggle off Allow Inventory Tracking. You can turn it back on at any time when you're ready to resume.
Inventory Sync helps keep your stock levels accurate across connected platforms by automatically updating inventory as orders are shipped or restocked.
To learn more, visit Enable Inventory Sync.
You can view your inventory stock levels at the product level, the order level, and in the shipping sidebar.
To learn more, visit View Internal Inventory Stock Counts.
To create Inventory Warehouse Locations:
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Go to Settings > Inventory Management > Inventory Warehouses.
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Click the Actions menu for the warehouse and then select Manage Locations.
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Click Add Location in the Inventory Warehouse window.
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Enter all of this warehouse’s Inventory Locations in the boxes when they appear.
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Repeat this process for all the locations you need to add.
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Click Save for each location you create.
To adjust the Inventory Warehouse layout:
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Click the Actions menu (three dots) and select Manage Locations from the drop-down menu for the Inventory Warehouse you just created.
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Click the Warehouse Layout drop-down in the top right of the pop-up window.
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Configure how detailed you want your inventory locations to be for each warehouse.
The options are Area, Unit, Shelf, and Bin.
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Check as many options from the Warehouse Layout drop-down (Area, Unit, Shelf, and Bin) as apply to your warehouse.
Enable 'Do Not Track Inventory' from the Products page to prevent ShipStation from tracking inventory for specific products that don’t require inventory management, such as:
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Coupons or promotional items
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Free samples
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Seasonal or occasional products
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Limited-edition or one-time-only items
When enabled, ShipStation will:
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Exclude the product from inventory and insight reports.
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Disable inventory actions like stock allocation, reorder alerts, and blocking shipments due to zero stock.
To enable 'Do Not Track':
Your ShipStation account User Management Settings include some inventory-specific permissions and restrictions.
Admin users can go to Settings > Account > User Management and click Edit to modify these permissions for any user.
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Permissions: For non-admin users, check the Inventory Management box to give the user permission to add, move, and remove inventory, allocate and deallocate inventory for an order, or set up allocation strategies.
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Restrictions: Enabling this option disables the Allocate, Allocate By, and Deallocate buttons for the user. The user can view inventory data, but cannot modify it.
Print a product's Inventory Locations (from the Product Details > Inventory > Location field) on packing slips to ensure you are always picking and packing the right item from the right location.
You can add the product's Inventory Location to both your default packing slip and custom packing slips, as described in the steps below.
Three things to note about this feature:
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Enable Inventory Tracking must be set to active in
Settings > Inventory Management > Inventory Settings. -
Items must be allocated in the order to print on the packing slip successfully.
ShipStation automatically allocates items for a shipment when you print the packing slip, but if you preview the packing slip prior to printing, the preview will display unallocated in the item location section.
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If you have more than one warehouse in your product's inventory list, ShipStation will always print the first Location in this list on the packing slip (as this is where inventory deducts from by default).
The default packing slip template in ShipStation now includes the Inventory Location value in the Order Items table, if you have enabled the corresponding packing slip document option.
Here is how this information will appear on the default packing slip:
To enable the product inventory location to print on your default packing slip:
Not Available in ShipStation Legacy
You cannot enable or disable the setting while in ShipStation Legacy Layout.
If you have custom packing slip templates, you can add the product's Inventory Location information to the Order Items section of the template using a new field replacement, [Product Location].
Requires HTML
Packing slip templates require some basic HTML knowledge.
ShipStation does not provide custom HTML assistance. Our support team is available to troubleshoot, but they do not provide design or consultation services. Visit our user forum for custom template help from other ShipStation users.
To add the [Product Location] field replacement to a custom packing slip, do the following:
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Click Edit next to the packing slip you wish to edit.
If you want to create a custom packing slip from the default packing slip, click Copy. This will make a copy you can edit.
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Click the Order Items header in the packing slip editor.
How you proceed from here will depend on where you want the Inventory Location to appear in the Order Items table. Note that the Order Items table includes both the Order Items Header and Order Items section.
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If you add a column to the table in the Order Items section, you must also add a corresponding column to the Order Items Header section.
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If you replace one field replacement with another, you must also change the corresponding column in the Order Items Header section to match.
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The example below will illustrate adding a column to the Order Items table in a template so it prints the [Product Location].
In this example, we'll add a column to the right of the SKU column in the Order Items table to hold the Inventory Location information.
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Place your cursor after the first row </td> tag and hit Return.
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Copy and paste the following code into the space you just created:
<td align=left></td>
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Place your cursor between the opening and closing tags.
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Click the [Product Location] field replacement button to add the field replacement between the tags.
The [Product Location] field replacement is located under the Order Items section in the Field Replacement column.
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Click on the Order Items Header section of the editor.
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Place your cursor after the first row </td> tag and hit Return.
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Copy and paste the following code into the space you just created:
<th align=left>Location</th>
You can use any text you like between the <th> tags. This is the text that appears in the table header to tell your team what information they are looking at.
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Click Save.
And that's it! Any order that uses this packing slip and has its items allocated will now print the product's Inventory Location.
Notes about the [Product Location] Field Replacement
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The [Product Location] field replacement is not available in ShipStation's Legacy Layout.
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The [Product Location] field replacement can only be used in the Order Items section of the packing slip template since it is item- level information. If you add to any other section it will not function as a field replacement and will simply print as plain text on your packing slip.
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The Location field in the Product Details follows the layout you set in your Inventory Warehouse settings, located in
Settings > Inventory Management > Inventory Warehouse > Manage Locations. This example includes Area, Unit, Shelf, and Bin, but your layout may differ.