Tracked vs Non-tracked Variants
Why some variants never reserve stock or trigger low-stock alerts, and how to switch a variant to tracked.
- Estimated time
- 4 min
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Required plan
- Any plan
- Last updated
- June 29, 2026
Overview
When a Shopify variant has inventory_management set to null it is treated as non_tracked. Non-tracked variants are never reserved, never produce stock movements, never push to a channel, never block an order, and never raise low-stock alerts. To enable tracking, set inventory_management to shopify in your Shopify admin and re-import.
Related articles
- Inventory Overview
How SellPilot tracks stock per variant per warehouse, including reservations and the canonical pipeline that protects your data.
- Connect Shopify
Install the SellPilot app on your Shopify store to sync products, orders, customers and inventory in both directions.
- Inventory Push to Channels
How tracked stock changes are sent back to Shopify (and other supported channels), and why a missing mapping turns a warehouse into Local-only.
- Inventory Reservations
Reservations hold stock for confirmed orders so two customers don't oversell the same unit.