Cycle counts in Shopify after Stocky

A cycle count is a small, regular count of part of your stock (one shelf, one vendor, your top sellers) instead of closing the shop for a full stocktake. Done every week, it keeps Shopify's numbers close to the shelf all year and catches problems while they are still small.

What to count, and how often

• Fast movers weekly: the products behind most of your sales (often the top 20%).
• The middle monthly, and slow or cheap items once a quarter.
• Problem items whenever they show up: an oversell, a negative stock level, a customer who could not find something.
• Keep each count small enough to finish in 15-30 minutes, so it actually gets done.

Running a cycle count with Shopify's Stock counts

1. Products > Inventory > Stock counts > Create count, choose the location.
2. Add only the products for this cycle (search, scan, or import a CSV of SKUs).
3. Name counts the same way each time, e.g. "Weekly cycle count - Front store", so you can search them later.
4. Count (in the admin, or in POS at locations with POS Pro), request review, approve.

Only the products in the count change, which is what a cycle count should do. Each count is one location, counts cannot be duplicated as a template, and they cannot be exported, so a spreadsheet of what you counted when is up to you.

What a cycle-count app adds

What we are building into Countwell for this:

• Cycle count is the default: only what you scan changes, nothing else is touched.
• Count by vendor at a location, without picking products one by one.
• Count on any phone in the Shopify mobile app with the camera, no POS Pro needed.
• Sales during the count are kept, so you can count with the shop open.
• Variance in units and at cost, exported to CSV, so you can track shrinkage over time.

Sources

• Shopify Help: Creating and managing stock counts
• Shopify Help: Viewing and searching your stock counts
• Shopify Changelog: Run stock counts in POS (28 Sep 2026)

Checked against Shopify's help pages on 1 November 2026.