Shopify PO & Transfer Sync Blues: Your Guide to Handling Updates When a Transfer is 'In Progress'

Hey fellow store owners!

Ever been there? You’ve got a purchase order (PO) all set up, a transfer created and marked “In Progress” to get those incoming quantities reflected in your inventory, and then… your supplier makes a last-minute change. Maybe they added a few more units of an existing product, or even a brand new item you requested. You dutifully update your PO in Shopify, only to realize your transfer isn’t budging. Sound familiar?

If so, you’re definitely not alone. This exact scenario sparked a really insightful discussion recently in the Shopify Community, started by @Filipe_Silva. It’s a pain point many of us have experienced, highlighting a particular quirk in Shopify’s inventory and transfer system that can feel, well, pretty frustrating.

The Heart of the Problem: Why POs and Transfers Don't Always Play Nice

The core issue, as pointed out by community members like Custom-Cursor and bchen27, is that once a transfer hits that “In Progress” status, it essentially becomes its own entity. Think of it like a child leaving the nest – it’s still related to the PO, but it’s now charting its own course, independent of further changes to its parent PO. As @bchen27 put it, “once a transfer is marked in-progress it basically becomes a separate entity from the PO, so any changes you make to the purchase order don’t flow down. it’s not a bug exactly but the workflow is terrible.”

This means if your supplier adds items or adjusts quantities after you’ve marked that transfer as “In Progress,” your Shopify PO will reflect the new reality, but your transfer won’t. And if your transfer doesn’t update, your incoming inventory counts will be off, leading to potential stockouts or overstock situations. Not ideal for accurate planning, right?

@Filipe_Silva shared the collective groan, asking, “So, does this mean I have to do the work twice: update both the purchase order and the transfer? This certainly confirms what everyone has been saying: this update is truly dreadful…” We feel you, Filipe!

The Not-So-Great Solutions (and Why to Avoid Them)

Initially, some of us might think about drastic measures. @Filipe_Silva even tried to delete the transfer or unlink and reassociate it, only to find those options weren't available once "In Progress." And the idea of rejecting the entire transfer and creating a new one? That’s a headache, not just in terms of re-entry, but as Filipe rightly pointed out, it “distorts my statistics when I am trying to determine which suppliers are the most reliable for restocking.” You want your supplier performance data to be accurate, not skewed by system workarounds.

The Clean Way Around It: Manually Adding Products to an Existing Transfer

Thankfully, @Moeed swooped in with a fantastic, community-vetted workaround that saves you from rejecting or recreating transfers, keeping your supplier stats intact. It’s not quite automatic sync, but it’s the most efficient way to manage these changes today.

Here’s how you can manually add those new items or adjusted quantities to an already “In Progress” transfer:

1. Navigate to Your Transfers: From your Shopify admin, go to Products, then click on Transfers.
2. Open the Specific Transfer: Find and click on the “In Progress” transfer that needs updating.
3. Access More Actions: On the transfer details page, look for the More actions dropdown menu. Click it.
4. Select “Add products”: From the dropdown, choose Add products.
5. Select and Enter Quantities: A new window will pop up. Here, you can select the specific items your supplier added or updated. For each selected item, enter the correct incoming quantities in the Move column.
6. Save Your Changes: Once you’ve added all the necessary products and quantities, click Save.

What happens next is pretty neat: these newly added items will appear as a separate shipment within the same existing transfer. This means they’re tracked independently, but still associated with the main transfer, and crucially, their incoming quantities will now correctly reflect in your inventory. This method avoids messing with the original transfer's integrity or your supplier statistics.

A Note on Separate Shipments and Other Frustrations

While this workaround is a lifesaver for inventory accuracy, @Filipe_Silva also raised a valid point that these additions create a separate shipment, even if everything is arriving in the same physical package. It’s a minor inconvenience, but it’s another testament to the workflow feeling a bit clunky for real-world scenarios.

Another challenge Filipe mentioned was the inability to modify or add the shipper/origin directly on an “In Progress” transfer, even if it could be changed on the PO. This highlights the general inflexibility once a transfer is past its initial creation stage. It’s clear that while the “Add products” feature helps with quantities, other details remain locked down.

Looking Ahead: Your Voice Matters

The good news is that this isn't a problem Shopify is unaware of. As @bchen27 mentioned, “a lot of merchants have been pushing feedback on this through the community.” @Moeed even suggested raising these points on community.shopify.dev to ensure it gets logged. The fact that official documentation doesn't fully cover these scenarios (as @Filipe_Silva pointed out) is another reason why community discussions like this are so vital.

So, for now, the manual “Add products” method is your best bet for keeping your inventory accurate and your sanity intact when dealing with those inevitable PO amendments. It’s a bit of double entry, yes, but it’s far better than distorting your data or spending hours trying to undo and redo work. Keep those feedback points coming to Shopify, because collective input is how we get these workflows polished and perfected for all of us.