Shopify stock counts now run in the admin: what changed (Oct 2026)

Three weeks after putting stock counts into Shopify POS, Shopify has moved the counting itself into the admin. The changelog entry of 20 October 2026, titled Create, manage and review stock counts in Shopify admin, lists the new pieces: counts can be created and scheduled in the admin, products added by search or barcode scan, counts assigned to staff who can complete them in the admin or in POS, several staff can contribute to one count without overwriting each other, every recorded quantity shows who entered it, and new permissions separate the people who count from the people who review and approve.

We wrote about the September release in Shopify POS stock counts vs Quick count vs a stocktake app and several of the limits we described there have moved. This post is the update: what changed, what the changelog does not say, and an honest look at where a Restock Ops stocktake still earns its place now that Shopify has a reviewed count of its own.

What the 20 October release adds

• Counting in the admin. In September a count was planned in the admin but could only be performed on a POS device at the chosen location. Now a staff member can open the count in a browser and record quantities there, by barcode scanner or by typing.
• Assignment. A count is assigned to specific staff, who see it as theirs to complete.
• Several counters on one count. More than one person can record quantities in the same count at the same time, and Shopify keeps each entry rather than letting the last save win.
• Per quantity attribution. The count shows who recorded each quantity, not only who submitted the count.
• Progress tracking from creation to completion, so a manager elsewhere can see how far a Tuesday count has got without phoning.
• Permissions. One permission to perform counts, another to review and approve them. The review step, where counted is compared with recorded and the adjustment is approved before stock changes, is unchanged from September.

What it does not say

The September entry was explicit that running counts in POS requires POS Pro and POS version 11.16 or later. The October entry does not mention POS Pro at all. It would be natural to read that as the admin side being available to every store, and it may be, but the changelog does not state it, and we have not found a help centre page yet that does. If you are on Basic with no POS subscription, open Products in your admin and look for Stock counts before planning around it.

It also says nothing about the API. In September there was no way for an app to read a Shopify stock count or its variances, and nothing in the October note changes that. A count done in Shopify stays in Shopify; the record of who counted and what changed is visible in the admin but not, as far as we can tell, exportable or available to a reorder report.

Finally, the note describes counting what is on the shelf against what Shopify has recorded. It does not describe counting against a purchase order or a delivery, which is a different job: receiving. If what you are checking is whether the supplier sent what you ordered, see receiving a purchase order.

How the two counts compare after this release

Where Shopify now wins

Any count with more than one person on it. A full count of a warehouse where three people take an aisle each is exactly what multi staff contribution and per quantity attribution are for, and a stocktake app that assumes one person at one screen cannot match it. If you were doing that with three Restock Ops stocktakes and adding the results up, stop; Shopify does it better now.

Any count where head office needs to see progress and who did what without asking. Assignment plus progress tracking is a management feature, and it is the thing merchants with several locations asked Shopify for.

Any count that already happens on a POS device. Nothing in the October release takes anything away from the September flow; it adds the browser as a second place to count.

Where a stocktake app still fits

Counting while the store is selling. A Restock Ops stocktake records the expected quantity as Shopify's on hand at the moment each line is added, and before anything is written it re reads Shopify. If a unit sold between your scan and your apply, the expected value is refreshed, the variance recalculates, and if on hand has moved since the last refresh the apply is refused with a message naming the lines, so you review again rather than overwrite a sale. The detail is in stocktaking while selling. The Shopify note does not describe what happens to a count when stock moves during it, and until it does we would be careful running one on a busy day.

Writing the adjustment the right way. Discrepancies are applied as a change to available of counted minus expected on hand, which is the delta that leaves committed units alone. That is why the app's review screen shows only lines where counted differs from expected, sorted by the size of the difference, with a note field and a per line exclude toggle: the lines you leave in are the only ones that change.

Undo. An applied stocktake can be reversed in one click. The reversal is written to Shopify as a separate correction adjustment that references the original, and the stocktake is marked undone, so the history shows both the mistake and the fix. We have not seen Shopify describe an undo for an approved stock count; reversing one appears to mean another count or a manual adjustment.

Stores without POS. A brand that sells online, keeps stock in a unit and has never bought a POS subscription gets the same reviewed count with a scanner from the office supply shop. If the October release turns out to be available to those stores too, that gap closes, and we will update this post when the help centre confirms it either way.

The count next to the rest of the stock work. A stocktake in Restock Ops sits beside the purchase orders, the receipts and the reorder report, so a short line found in a count can become a purchase order line in the same session. Shopify's count sits beside Shopify's inventory pages, which is a reasonable place for it; it is simply not where reordering happens.

A routine that uses both

1. Full counts, twice a year, as Shopify stock counts. Schedule them in the admin, assign an aisle or a category per person, and let the review and permission model do what it was built for.
2. Cycle counts of fast movers during trading hours in Restock Ops, where the expected quantity refresh and the refusal to apply over a moved on hand protect the count from the sales happening around it.
3. Receiving against purchase orders in Restock Ops, every delivery, with a scanner. Counting a delivery against the order is a different question from counting a shelf against the system, and mixing them is how both numbers go wrong.
4. Spot checks of one shelf with Quick count on POS if you have it, when you need a number now and do not need a record.

What to do this week

Open Products in your admin and look for Stock counts. If it is there, create a small one for a single shelf, assign it to yourself, count in the browser, and review. You will know in ten minutes whether the permission model and the assignment flow suit your team. Then decide which of your counting jobs it takes over. Our guess, for most stores we talk to, is the full count and nothing else; the daily and weekly counting that keeps a store honest between full counts is still a scanner, a browser and a review screen that knows stock moved while you were counting.

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