Get your inventory into Sumtracker and go live

By this point in onboarding, your products, bundles, and warehouses are already set up in Sumtracker. The final step before going live is to turn on inventory sync. This is what activates Sumtracker as your inventory system — once sync is on, stock levels stay aligned between Sumtracker and your store automatically.

This article explains what sync does, what to take care of while turning it on, and how to turn it on safely.

What inventory sync does

Inventory sync keeps stock levels aligned between Sumtracker and your store. Sync is unidirectional per location — for any given location, inventory flows in one direction only, and you choose which side is the source of truth:

Sumtracker as master. Sumtracker is the source of truth. Stock changes in Sumtracker (from purchase orders, manual adjustments, bundles) are pushed to your store. Any changes made directly in your store are overwritten by Sumtracker on the next sync cycle.
Shopify as master. Your store is the source of truth. Sumtracker reads inventory from the store and does not push stock back. This option is used in specific cases — most merchants set Sumtracker as the master.

You pick the direction at the time of turning on sync, and you can change it later from Sales Channels > Warehouse Connections.

Things to take care of while turning on the sync

You don't need to prepare anything in advance. Inventory gets copied from your store into Sumtracker as part of the sync setup itself — that's the whole point of the Copy inventory option. The guided workflow walks you through everything. There are just a few things to pay attention to while you're going through it.

1. Mapping Shopify locations to Sumtracker warehouses

If you have more than one Shopify location, or more than one warehouse in Sumtracker, the workflow will ask you to map them. Each Shopify location needs to be linked to the corresponding Sumtracker warehouse so that stock flows between the right pair. Get this right at setup — incorrect mapping is the most common cause of inventory going to the wrong place after sync is on.

2. Duplicate SKUs

Sumtracker uses SKU as the single identifier to match products between your store and Sumtracker. If you have multiple Shopify listings sharing the same SKU, Sumtracker treats them as the same product with shared inventory.

When you choose to copy inventory from Shopify, Sumtracker picks the stock value from one of those duplicate listings and applies it across all of them. Make sure this is intentional. If two listings should have independent stock, give them unique SKUs before completing the sync setup. If they genuinely represent the same physical product (for example, the same item listed in different categories), shared inventory is exactly what you want.

3. Copying inventory from store to Sumtracker

When you turn on sync, you'll be asked whether to copy inventory from your store into Sumtracker. There are two options:

Copy inventory from Shopify — recommended if your store's stock counts are accurate. Sumtracker takes the inventory values from Shopify as the starting point. This is the most common choice.
Don't copy inventory — choose this only if you've already entered correct stock levels into Sumtracker yourself and your store's counts are out of date or unreliable. This is usually the case when you are connecting the 2nd or 3rd store with common products that already have their correct inventory levels in Sumtracker.

In almost all cases, you'll want to copy inventory from your Sales Channel during sync setup. This takes your store's current stock counts and brings them into Sumtracker as the starting point. Only choose Don't copy inventory if you have a specific reason — for example, if you've already entered correct stock levels into Sumtracker yourself and your store's counts are out of date.

4. Past orders won't be synced

Only orders placed after sync is turned on will flow into Sumtracker. Any orders that came in before sync was activated will not be pulled in retroactively. This is normal and expected — there's nothing to fix or adjust for. Sumtracker simply starts tracking from the moment sync goes live.

How to turn on inventory sync

There are two ways to do this. If you're confident about your setup, you can do it yourself. If you're unsure, we strongly recommend doing it on a call with us.

Option A: Do it yourself

Go to Sales Channels → click on the connected channel → from the Channel Settings page, click Turn on Sync.

You'll be taken through a guided workflow that walks you through each step — choosing the direction of sync, picking whether to copy inventory, reviewing SKU duplicates, and confirming the location mapping. Follow the workflow as it appears on the screen.

Option B: Turn it on with Sumtracker support on a call

If any part of the setup feels unclear — especially around which side should be the master, how duplicate SKUs will behave, or how multi-warehouse setups will sync — get in touch with us and schedule a call. We'll walk through the configuration with you and turn sync on while you're on the call, so you can see exactly what happens and ask questions as we go.

This is the safest route if you're a larger catalogue, running multi-channel, or moving from another inventory tool.

After sync is turned on

Once sync is live:

New orders from your store start flowing into Sumtracker automatically.
Inventory updates push from Sumtracker to your store every few minutes.
Any stock change in Sumtracker — purchase orders received, stocktakes, inventory adjustments — is reflected in your store within a few minutes.
Stop making inventory edits directly on your store. With Sumtracker as the master, those changes get overwritten on the next sync. All inventory adjustments should happen in Sumtracker from here on.

You're now live on Sumtracker.