Most Shopify merchants rely too heavily on their Available-to-Promise (ATP) inventory. They communicate it to customers, and then wonder why promises still slip and margins erode.
Consider this: you run a two-day promo.
ATP says you have plenty: 1,500 units across DC + 60 stores. But routing is set to “closest node” with no labor or cutoff context. Orders split three ways: two zones needed air freight to meet the delivery promise, and 15% of Buy Online, Pickup in Store (BOPIS) couldn’t be picked up before the store closed. Brace for cancellations, refunds, and negative reviews. The inventory was “there,” but without intelligent routing, you paid more, shipped slower, and disappointed the customer.
ATP tells you what exists; order routing decides what ships from where, when, and at what cost. Until you can activate ATP across stores, DCs, 3PLs, and drop-ship in real time, you’re doing unified commerce—but not unified fulfillment.
Deposco turns visibility into velocity by making every Shopify promise profit-aware and executable.
Visibility is not velocity: make ATP actionable
Available inventory without advanced execution logic creates a false sense of control. You see it, so you assume you can sell it.
Then, why doesn’t your current system choose the smart fulfillment node?
Shopify merchants need decisions, not dashboards—rules that continuously weigh inventory, labor, and carrier realities before the promise is made.
- Use service and inventory constraints (inventory, capacity, carrier cutoffs, heat maps) to route, rather than static proximity alone.
- Optimize for cost-to-serve and promise date (fewer split ships, on-time rates up, late fees down).
- Orchestrate DC, store, marketplace, and drop-ship in one flow with exceptions (fraud holds, backorders, substitutions).
Seeing accurate ATP in Shopify is step one; activating ATP is the step that protects promises and profit on every single order.
The best WMS for Shopify transforms your customer experiences with specialized fulfillment capabilities, built to work perfectly with your Shopify unified commerce foundation.
Profit-Safe Promise Keeping (Not Just Fast—Smart)
When building a world-class Shopify fulfillment operation, it’s easy to err on the side of speed over cost control. This is especially true if your execution is inconsistent. Get it out the door now, pay the bills later.
“Fastest” can be the most expensive and still “miss”. Merchants win when speed is balanced with contribution margin and SLA risk, automatically, at the moment of commitment.
- Safeguard margin by choosing nodes that meet promise dates – no faster – and protect net contribution after shipping, picking, and packaging. Margin drives growth.
- Suppress loss-making routes (e.g., long-zone air) and automatically consolidate orders to reduce split-ship leakage. Only split-ship if there’s no way to meet your promise any other way.
- Quote delivery promise dates with confidence, then re-allocate dynamically as demand spikes or inventory moves. Allow your inventory levels to adjust over time through forecasting and replenishment whenever possible.
Serving demand is essential, but if you can’t balance that with operational discipline, you won’t be serving demand too far into the future. Margin-conscious routing turns customer promises into a growth lever—not a millstone on your profitability.
Shopify Reality: Spiky Demand, Omnichannel Edge Cases
Drops, pre-orders, BOPIS, and ship-from-store strategies expose brittle rules. Rules that were often ‘set and forget’ for a business model that’s a fraction of what you do now. Shopify unified commerce demands APIs and logic built for real-world volatility, not happy-path assumptions.
- Bake in-store labor windows, carrier pickups, blackout rules, and geo-throttles for BOPIS / Ship from Store (SFS) reliability.
- Safeguard promos with ATP caps, fair-share allocation, geo- and channel- fencing, and regional throttling to prevent oversells. Retail traffic can be even easier to lose than online if empty shelves ruin your event.
- Drive instant agreement across Shopify, apps, and warehouses using regular syncs and webhook-driven decisions.
Unified commerce can’t happen if every channel disagrees on inventory, execution, and priorities. When every channel sees the same decision at the same time – made using shared informational ‘truth’, exceptions shrink and customer loyalty grows.
Deposco: the other half you can’t ignore
Read how adding Deposco drives dependable syncing.
It’s not enough to agree on the facts if the business can’t effectively drive outcomes using them. Accurate ATP, not just on-hand, but a valid number that considers commits and other protected statuses, is the first step in ecommerce. Selling and fulfilling effectively drives customer loyalty; it’s the foundation of growth.
Deposco helps Shopify merchants convert their visibility into strong margins, consistent on-time performance, and a customer experience that’s second to none. Reliable execution defends, then grows, brand loyalty.
It’s how Psycho Bunny was able to scale from a Shopify-first startup to an enterprise operation rapidly. Connecting their entire selling ecosystem with an enterprise-scalable, cloud-based architecture, Deposco delivered immediate operational improvements while positioning the brand for continued growth across multiple dimensions.
“We were selling inventory we didn’t actually have in stock, which put us at risk of disappointing customers after we’d already made the sale. Once we matured on the Deposco system, we saw our short ships drop dramatically from 10% to just 1%. Now, we can make those promises and know that we won’t break them.”
– Jean-Aymeri Magistris, VP of IT, Data & Analytics and PMO, Psycho Bunny