Benchtop
Make-to-order inventory on Shopify: how to deduct materials when you sell
If you make your products to order, you have a tracking problem Shopify was not built for. Shopify counts finished products. It does not know that a bag is really fabric, a zipper, thread, and a label, or that a candle is wax, a wick, and a jar. So when an order comes in and you go to make it, nothing tells you that you just used up materials, and nothing warns you when you are about to run out of them.
This guide explains how make-to-order material tracking should work on Shopify, what your options are, and how to set it up so your raw materials come off automatically the moment a product sells.
Does Shopify deduct raw materials when you sell?
No. Out of the box, Shopify only tracks the finished product. When someone buys a candle, Shopify reduces your candle count by one. It has no concept of the wax, wick, and jar that went into it, so your material stock stays frozen at whatever you last typed in by hand.
For a maker, that is the whole ballgame. The thing you actually run out of is materials, and that is exactly the thing Shopify cannot see. To deduct materials when a product sells, you need a small app that adds a recipe, sometimes called a bill of materials, on top of Shopify.
First, which kind of maker are you?
Before you pick a tool, it helps to know which way you work, because the right behavior is different for each.
- Make to stock. You produce a batch ahead of time and sell from it. Your materials are used up when you make the batch, not when someone buys. A candle maker who pours fifty jars on Sunday and sells them over the month works this way.
- Make to order. You make each item after it is bought. Your materials are used up at the moment of sale. A bag maker who sews each bag once the order comes in works this way, and so do a lot of apparel and small-batch drop brands.
This matters because deducting materials at the wrong moment double counts your stock. If you make to stock, materials should come off when you log the batch. If you make to order, they should come off when the order comes in. A good tool lets you choose, ideally per product, since plenty of shops do some of each.
How make-to-order deduction should work
For a make-to-order product, the flow you want is simple and hands off:
- An order comes in for a finished product.
- The app looks up that product's recipe and subtracts each material it uses from your on-hand stock, automatically.
- Your low-stock alerts stay honest, because your material counts move on their own with every sale.
- If the order is later cancelled or refunded, the materials go back on the shelf, so a returned sale does not quietly understate your stock.
That last point is the one cheaper setups skip, and it matters. Without it, every cancellation slowly pushes your material counts below reality.
Your options for deducting materials at sale
There are two broad kinds of app that can do this on Shopify, and they suit different needs.
Bundle and kit apps
These let you set up each material as a hidden product with its own SKU, then link those hidden products to your finished item as a bundle. When the finished item sells, the components come off. This works, and it is often cheap, but it has two rough edges for makers. You have to maintain every material as a product in your catalog, which gets fiddly fast when you have dozens of them, and these apps generally do not tell you what each product actually costs you to make.
Maker and manufacturing inventory tools
These treat raw materials as materials rather than products, and add recipes, costing, and often batch tracking on top. They fit how makers actually think. The trade-off is that the established ones tend to be priced for growing businesses and can be a lot to set up if you just want materials to come off when you sell.
The honest summary is that bundle apps are simplest for pure assembly, and maker tools are better if you also care about cost and margin. What has been missing is a maker tool that does make-to-order deduction, stays simple, and has a genuinely free tier.
How to set it up with Benchtop
Benchtop is the tool we built for exactly this, and it is free to start. It adds materials, recipes, cost, and both make-to-stock and make-to-order deduction inside your Shopify admin. Setting up a make-to-order product takes about a minute.
- Add your materials and what you paid for them, so Benchtop knows your stock and your costs.
- Build a recipe for a product: pick the Shopify variant and list what one unit uses, for example half a metre of fabric, one zipper, and one label.
- Set that product to make to order. On the recipe, choose "one at a time, when it is ordered."
- That is it. From then on, every order deducts that product's materials automatically, your low-stock alerts stay accurate, and a cancel or refund puts the materials back.
You can leave other products set to make to stock, so a shop that pours candles ahead of time but sews bags to order can run both models side by side.
Common questions
Does this work for in-person and POS sales too?
Yes. Point-of-sale sales create Shopify orders just like online ones, so the same deduction runs whether the sale happened on your storefront or at a market stall, all from one place.
What happens if an order is cancelled or refunded?
The materials are put back on the shelf. A full cancel restocks the whole order, and a partial refund restocks only the units you refunded, so your counts always match what actually shipped.
Is there really a free option?
Yes. Benchtop is free to start, including make-to-order deduction, up to a generous number of materials and recipes. You only pay once you outgrow those limits.
Do I need to understand bills of materials or accounting?
No. A recipe is just a list of what goes into one unit. You enter that in plain terms and Benchtop handles the rest, including the cost per unit and your margin if you want to see it.
What if I make to stock, not to order?
Then you log a batch when you make it, and the materials come off then instead. Benchtop supports both, chosen per product. See how to calculate product cost and the setup guide for more.