Shopify inventory adjustment history: checking what was received and by whom
Short version: Open a product (and variant), make sure Inventory tracked is on, and click View adjustment history. You'll see every stock change for the last 180 days: date, activity, who or which app made it, and the new quantities. For older changes or a store-wide view, use the inventory adjustment changes report.
When stock in Shopify doesn't match the shelf, the adjustment history is where you find out why. It's also how you check that a delivery was received correctly, by whom, and at which location. Here's how to read it and use it to audit receiving.
Opening the adjustment history
- In your Shopify admin, go to Products and click the product.
- If it has variants, click the variant. History is shown one variant at a time.
- In the Inventory section, check that Inventory tracked is turned on.
- Click View adjustment history.
In the Shopify mobile app it's the same path: Products, the product and variant, the Inventory section, then View adjustment history.
What each entry shows
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Date | When the change happened |
| Activity | What caused it: an order, a return, a transfer, or a manual adjustment and its reason |
| Created by | The staff member, app or sales channel that made the change |
| Unavailable, Committed, Available, On hand, Incoming | How much each quantity changed, and the new total |
For manual changes, what you see under Activity depends on how the change was made. With Set to, the activity shows the reason chosen, or "Manually adjusted" if none was. With Adjust by, it shows the movement, for example "Moved from Safety stock".
The 180-day limit
A product's adjustment history shows only the last 180 days. For anything older, or to look across many products, use the inventory adjustment changes report in Analytics. It can be filtered by SKU, location, staff member, app and adjustment reason.
Auditing a delivery against its invoice
A quick check after receiving, or when a supplier queries a delivery:
- Take the supplier's invoice or delivery note and pick three to five lines, including the largest.
- For each, open the variant's adjustment history and find the entry on the receiving date.
- Check the quantity matches the invoice (converted to units if it was priced by the case).
- Check the location is where the goods arrived.
- Check who made it: a staff member, the transfer from a purchase order, or your receiving app.
- Check the activity says received, not "Manually adjusted" or "Correction". If your team uses vague reasons, fix the habit now; it's what makes this history useful later.
For a larger audit, run the inventory adjustment changes report for the receiving date and location, filter to the received reason, and compare totals with the invoice.
Reading common patterns
| Pattern | Likely cause |
|---|---|
| Received twice on the same day | Delivery entered by two people, or a CSV imported twice |
| Large "Set to" change after a delivery | An inventory CSV that set totals and overwrote sales in between (see inventory CSV) |
| Received at the wrong location then a correction | Should have been a transfer (see multi-location receiving) |
| Quantity 24× too high or low | Case received as units or vice versa (see pack pricing) |
Team habits that keep the history useful
The adjustment history is only as clear as the way your team changes stock. A few rules make it far easier to read months later:
- Give everyone their own staff account. "Created by" is only meaningful if people don't share a login.
- Always choose a reason when setting quantities by hand. "Manually adjusted" tells you nothing in six months.
- Add, don't overwrite, for deliveries. Use Adjust by or a purchase order transfer for received stock, and keep Set to and the inventory CSV for counts. Then "set" entries in the history always mean a stocktake.
- Move stock with transfers, never with a minus at one location and a plus at another.
- Write the supplier's invoice number somewhere you can search: a purchase order reference, a transfer note, or your receiving app's history. That's the link between a history entry and the paper.
- Count something every week. A rolling count of one shelf or one supplier catches drift while it's small, and the history tells you when it started.
What the history doesn't show
- Costs. The adjustment history is about quantities. Cost per item changes aren't listed there, so keep your supplier invoices as the record of costs.
- The document. Shopify doesn't attach the supplier's invoice to an adjustment. File invoices by date and supplier so you can match them to history entries.
Where Box to Shelf helps
Box to Shelf applies stock with Shopify's Received reason, so every entry it makes is clearly a delivery and shows Box to Shelf as the app that made it. Its own history lists each document applied, with supplier, date and the lines changed, and the record of what was applied is kept until you uninstall (the documents themselves are deleted after 30 days). If you applied the wrong document, you can undo the last apply, which is recorded as its own adjustment.
Questions
How far back does Shopify adjustment history go?
The adjustment history on a product shows the last 180 days. For older changes, use the inventory adjustment changes report.
Sources
- Shopify Help Center: Viewing inventory adjustment history
- Shopify Help Center: Inventory CSV
- Shopify developer docs: Inventory quantities and states
Shopify changes its admin often. Steps were checked against the Shopify Help Center in November 2026; if a menu has moved, the help center links above have the current version.