Committed vs available inventory: which number a reorder point should use
Committed inventory on Shopify means the units already sitting in placed, unfulfilled orders: the stock is still in your building, but it is no longer yours to sell. That is why it is reported apart from available stock, and why the two numbers lead to different reorder decisions.
What committed inventory means
Committed inventory is the quantity of a SKU held in orders a customer has already placed and you have not fulfilled yet. The units are on your shelf. They are spoken for.
Shopify keeps that figure apart from the stock you can still sell, and reports inventory in separate states, where available is what is left after committed and unavailable quantities are taken out of what you hold on hand. So three different numbers can describe the same box of candles on the same morning.
A worked example
Take one SKU, a sandalwood candle in an 8 oz tin.
- On hand: 48 units, counted on the rack.
- Committed: 9 units, across three orders placed over the weekend and not yet packed.
- Available: 39 units, the number a new customer can still buy.
Nothing has moved. The picker has not touched the rack. But if you are deciding today whether to call your supplier, 48 is the wrong number to look at and 39 is the right one. Those 9 units are already going out the door.
The four numbers, and what each one is good for
| State | What it counts | Use it for a reorder point? |
|---|---|---|
| On hand | Everything physically in your locations, whatever its state | No. It includes units already promised to customers |
| Committed | Units in orders placed but not yet fulfilled | Not directly. Subtract it, because these units are leaving |
| Available | What a customer can still buy right now | Yes. This is the number to compare against your trigger level |
| Unavailable | Quantities held back from sale for a reason you have recorded | No. Treat it as off the shelf until it moves |
Which number a reorder point should use
A reorder point is a trigger level. Something has to be compared against it, and the honest comparison is available stock, not on hand.
The reason is simple. The point of the trigger is to ask whether what is left will outlast your supplier's lead time. Committed units will not be there to sell, so counting them flatters the number. On a store doing steady volume, the unfulfilled queue is often worth a day or two of cover, and a trigger read against on hand fires a day or two late. A late order is the whole problem.
The trade-off, stated plainly
Reading against available fires earlier. If a meaningful share of your orders get cancelled or refunded before they ship, some of those committed units come back to the shelf, and you will have ordered sooner than you strictly needed to. For most small stores, ordering slightly early costs carrying cost; ordering late costs the sale. Pick the error you can live with.
Do not count the same unit twice
There is one trap worth naming. If your sales velocity is built from orders placed rather than orders shipped, every committed unit has already been counted once as demand. Subtract committed stock from what you have on hand, compare that against your trigger, and leave it there. Do not also pad the trigger for the same backlog, or you will reorder on a number you have already discounted.
Related terms
Committed inventory only makes sense next to the numbers it sits beside.
- Available stock is on hand minus committed and unavailable: the figure every calculation on this page uses.
- Days of inventory on hand turns that figure into time, by dividing it by units sold per day.
- Reorder point is the trigger level itself, built from sales velocity and lead time.
- Safety stock is the cushion you add to that trigger for the days the supplier slips.
- Backorder is what you fall back on when committed demand outruns the stock you hold, and what it costs to rely on one.
- SKU is the unit all of this is counted per, and the thing a tracked-SKU limit counts.
Each has its own page in this glossary.
Questions
Does committed inventory reduce my available stock?
Yes. Shopify reports available as what is left of your on hand quantity after committed and unavailable quantities are taken out, so a unit cannot be committed and available at the same time.
Is committed inventory the same as sold?
Close, but not identical. The order is placed and the revenue is recorded, while the units are still in your building and have not shipped. For reorder purposes, treat them as gone.
Should my reorder point compare against available or on hand?
Available. On hand includes units already promised to customers, so a trigger read against it fires later than it should, by roughly the size of your unfulfilled order queue.
Why does my committed number stay high?
A committed quantity clears when the order is fulfilled or cancelled. A persistently high figure usually means a fulfilment backlog or an order stuck in an unfulfilled state, so it is worth checking the orders themselves rather than adjusting your stock numbers.
Can I ignore committed inventory if I ship same day?
Mostly, yes. If orders are packed within hours, the committed quantity at any moment is small and the gap between available and on hand is a rounding error. The slower you ship, the more it matters.
Does Restoc show committed inventory?
Restoc is built to show current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status per active SKU. We are not going to claim a breakdown by inventory state that is not there yet. When it ships, this page will say so.