Quickstart Guide

In this quick-start guide, we walk you through connecting Organizely to your Shopify store, modeling your warehouse, setting up barcodes and scanning, running AI-powered forecasts, and streamlining purchasing and receiving. Follow these steps to get your account synced, organize physical inventory, and start making smarter reordering decisions.

Quick overview: what you'll accomplish

  • Connect Organizely to Shopify using API keys
  • Initialize the import of products, variants, and orders from Shopify
  • Invite team members and assign roles
  • Model your warehouse with areas, shelves, bins, and generate barcodes
  • Run forecasting with lead time and safety stock defaults
  • Create suppliers, purchase orders, receive inventory, and sync back to Shopify

1. Connect Organizely to Shopify

The first step is to connect Organizely with your Shopify store from the Shopify admin. I recommend doing this on a desktop for easier navigation.
    From Shopify, click Settings (lower-left), then Apps and sales channels, then Develop apps.
    If this is your first custom app, enable custom app development and click Create an app. Give the app a descriptive name.
    Click Configure admin API scopes and select the permissions listed in Organizely. Make sure the number of selected scopes matches the list in Organizely.
    Open API credentials, then click Install app to reveal your store's secret token. Copy this immediately—Shopify only shows the secret token once per app.
Warning: Shopify exposes the app secret token only once. If you close the page without copying it, you will not be able to retrieve it again.
Paste the secret token, API key, and API secret key into Organizely, and add your store URL (format:  name.myshopify.com ). If you use a custom domain in Shopify, click the custom domain link in Settings on the top left to find the original  myshopify.com  domain. Once all fields are filled, click Test Connection in Organizely.
If Test Connection shows an error, it usually indicates an issue with the API keys, permissions, or store URL—reach out to support if you need help. If successful, you'll see a list of Shopify locations; choose a default location for syncing inventory and click Save to finalize the connection.
We recommend choosing the location where you hold your majority of inventory. This will help the forecasting algorithms.

2. Initialize the Shopify import

After saving your Shopify keys, start the import in Organizely:
    Go to Integrations > Shopify and click Initialize Integration.
    Large catalogs or many orders can take several hours to import. You will receive an email when initialization is complete.
    While importing, Organizely and Shopify will not yet be fully synchronized—so please do not create orders or products in Organizely until initialization finishes.
Once initialization completes, inventory updates are bidirectional in real time: changes in Organizely reflect in Shopify and vice versa.

3. Invite your team and assign roles

Use the waiting time during import to add your team. Organizely supports role-based access:
  • Admin — Full access, including billing.
  • Manager — Full access except billing.
  • Worker — Access to warehouse and catalog pages for tasks like inventory updates.

4. Model your warehouse (even if it’s small)

Regardless of whether you have a formal warehouse or are working from a small office, modeling your storage locations pays off. Create a hierarchical structure so you can track where inventory is physically stored and how much remains.
    Create your first Warehouse.
    Inside a warehouse, create subfolders: Areas → Shelves → Bins. The important distinction is that bins hold actual inventory; areas and shelves are organizational.
    If you have only a few variants or very limited space, you can create bins directly and skip intermediate levels.
Example layout: Storage room, Office, Packing area, General storage. Create a shelf inside general storage, and then a bin inside that shelf. Link bins to product variants after your Shopify import completes to enable live inventory sync between bin and variant.
When you update a bin’s quantity, the linked variant’s inventory updates too—and changes flow back to Shopify. This keeps your physical counts and online inventory aligned. Use the variant History tab to see where an inventory change originated.

5. Barcodes and scanning

Every shelf, bin, and product variant automatically receives a barcode on creation. Print these labels with your existing label printers (use appropriate paper sizes in your printer settings), then use your phone’s camera to scan labels directly from Organizely’s mobile site for quick location-based checks.
If you have a scanner device, you can also scan the barcodes directly on the Organizely search bar to navigate directly to that product / shelf / bin / etc.

6. Run AI-powered forecasting

Wait until all products and orders finish importing before running forecasts. Organizely’s forecast helps prioritize reorder decisions based on sales history and profit potential.
Start by setting global defaults on the Forecasting settings page:
  • Default lead time — how long (in days) it typically takes for new stock to arrive (example: 30 days).
  • Safety stock — extra days of stock to hold as a buffer (example: 7 days).
You can override defaults per supplier, product, or variant in the Purchasing tab for more granular control. After setting defaults, click Start Forecasting Calculation. For large catalogs this may take time.
When the calculation completes, you’ll see variants prioritized by urgency and profit potential. Hide irrelevant variants or inspect the recommendation details to understand why a reorder was suggested.

7. Suppliers, purchase orders, and tracking

Organizely’s purchasing flow begins with suppliers—store contact details and preferred communication channels so you can quickly reach the right person. For example, you can store a primary contact and note that you communicate via WhatsApp.
Link suppliers to products or variants from each product/variant’s Purchasing tab. Then create Purchase Orders to track incoming inventory:
    Create a PO and add existing catalog variants and custom (non-catalog) products if needed.
    Set the PO status from the top-left dropdown and print a PDF via the gear icon to send to suppliers.
    When you receive a tracking number from the supplier, add it to the PO’s Tracking tab—status updates automatically as shipment moves.

8. Receive inventory and sync to Shopify

When a shipment arrives, receive items against the purchase order. Select the received line items and record the quantities received. The badge color will indicate the status: green if fully received, orange if partially received.
If the line item is linked to a catalog variant, you can choose to sync the received inventory to the catalog. This updates quantities in Organizely and Shopify. For example, receiving and syncing five units could change a variant’s total from five to ten. Once all items are received and synced, set the purchase order status to Closed.

9. Need help?

If you run into any issues while connecting Shopify, initializing imports, modeling warehouses, forecasting, or receiving stock, contact our support team at  support@organizely.io . We’re happy to assist.