Supplier stock releases

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A supplier stock release (SSR) is the order type you use to pull stock that’s physically still at the supplier but already owned by you into one of your warehouse locations. It’s the counterpart to a PO line set to Supplier-held fulfillment: that PO registers the inventory as buyer-owned supplier-held stock; an SSR later releases it.

If your supplier never holds your stock — i.e., every PO is delivered straight to your warehouse — you don’t need SSRs.

On this page

• When to use an SSR
• Where supplier-held stock comes from
• What you can do here
• Key concepts
• See also

When to use an SSR

You hold stock at your supplier — through buy-ahead, batch production, or pre-positioning — and want to call some of it down to your own warehouse. The SSR captures the request, the shipment, and the receipt, and (optionally) syncs the received warehouse quantity back to Shopify on-hand.

Where supplier-held stock comes from

There are two ways to end up holding stock at a supplier:

• A line set to Supplier-held on an ordinary purchase order. Instead of adding to warehouse on-hand, receiving that line creates (or grows) a buyer-owned stock position at the PO’s own supplier.
• A whole purchase order delivered to another supplier. You buy from one supplier and a second one takes delivery; every line is held, and receiving credits the position to the supplier that holds the goods — not the one you bought from. Raise the release against the holder.

Either way, that buyer-owned balance is what releases draw from.

Consignment stock — goods in your warehouse that the supplier still owns — is tracked separately and cannot be released with an SSR.

What you can do here

Lifecycle The 7 statuses, transitions, and what you can edit at each.

Receiving & Shopify sync How received quantities consume supplier-held stock and reach Shopify.

Key concepts

• Supplier-held stock position — your inventory physically located at the supplier. Created from PO receipts when the PO line’s fulfillment mode is Supplier-held, or when the whole PO is delivered to another supplier.
• Release — the order that moves supplier-held stock from the supplier to one of your warehouses.
• Release line item — one variant + requested quantity on the release.
• Allocation — the link from a release line item to one or more supplier-held stock positions; consumed as the SSR is received.
• Destination location — the warehouse where the release will land. Required before you can send the release.

Note

SSRs do not create new stock — they only relocate stock you already own from the supplier to your warehouse. The PO receipt is what increased your owned quantity in the first place.

See also

• PO line items & fulfillment modes — where supplier-held stock originates.
• Deliver to another supplier — the other way stock ends up held at a supplier.
• Suppliers → directory — the Supply tab shows each supplier’s open held stock.
• Line-item column views — choosing and saving the columns on the line-item table.

Last updated: 31 August 2026