---
title: "Raw Materials, BOMs & Production for Shopify | Stockful"
description: "Shopify only tracks what you sell, not what you make it from. Stockful holds your materials, bills of materials and production batches, and tells you what to buy before you run out."
url: https://stockful.app/shopify-raw-materials
locale: en
---

# Track the Raw Materials Behind What You Sell

Shopify tracks the candle. It does not track the wax. If you make what you sell, your ingredients are invisible to every inventory tool you have tried, because those tools only understand Shopify products. Stockful holds materials as their own catalogue, with their own stock, costs and suppliers, links them to your products through bills of materials, and runs production batches that consume material and write the finished goods back to Shopify. Included on every plan, from $19.99/mo with a 14-day free trial.

[Start free trial](https://apps.shopify.com/stockful-inventory-management?utm_source=stockful-website&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=shopify-raw-materials&utm_content=hero)

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## Shopify on its own vs Stockful - side by side

|   | Shopify on its own | stockful. |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Materials you buy and consume | Not tracked. Flour and wax are not products | Their own catalogue, stocked in kilograms, metres, litres or count |
| What a product is made of | Nowhere to record it | Bills of materials, with quantities per unit made |
| Making a batch | A stock adjustment typed in afterwards | Start a batch to reserve material, close it to consume what it actually took |
| Materials made from other materials | Not possible | Multi-level. Dough you already hold reduces the flour you are told to buy |
| Knowing what to buy | Guesswork, or a spreadsheet | Reorder materials from open batches and your sales forecast, over each material's own lead time |
| Buying materials | A separate order, kept off system | On the same purchase order as products, received in one action |
| Planned against actual | Invisible | Yield variance on every closed batch, with a report that sorts by the worst |
| Reporting on materials | None | Six built-in reports and three queryable datasets |

## From ingredient to finished product

### Materials as their own catalogue

Wax, flour, fabric, thread, packaging. Each material carries its unit of measure, unit cost, supplier, lead time, minimum order and pack size. Shopify holds no quantity for any of it, so Stockful is the only record: open a SKU, use Count stock to enter what is actually on the shelf, and the difference is written to the ledger rather than quietly overwriting the number.

### Bills of materials, versioned

A bill of materials says what one unit takes. A recipe, in other words, though the app calls it a bill of materials so that is the word to look for. Quantities are per unit made, so it stays correct at any batch size, and grams convert into a material stocked in kilograms. Editing one supersedes it rather than rewriting it, so a run from last month still shows what it actually consumed.

### Production batches, planned and actual

Start a batch and the material is reserved: still on the shelf, but spoken for, and no longer counted as free. Close it with what you actually made and what it actually took, and Stockful consumes the real quantities and writes the finished goods to Shopify. The gap between the two is yield variance, and a recipe that consistently under-yields is worth knowing about.

### Reordering that follows the chain

Reorder materials answers what to buy from two directions at once: what open batches have committed, and your sales forecast walked back through your bills of materials. Finished stock you already hold, batches underway and intermediate stock all reduce it, and each material is asked about over its own lead time. Select rows and Stockful drafts the orders, one per supplier and destination.

FAQ

## Frequently asked questions

### Can Stockful track ingredients that are not Shopify products?

Yes. That is what raw materials are for. A material is held in Stockful rather than Shopify, with its own stock, unit of measure, cost, supplier and purchasing terms. Because Shopify holds no quantity for it, there is nothing to reconcile against, so accuracy comes from running your consumption through production batches and counting regularly with Count stock.

### Is a bill of materials the same as a recipe?

In practice, yes. The app calls it a bill of materials, and so does the documentation, so that is the term to look for in the navigation. It records what one unit of a finished item takes, with each component's quantity and unit. Under Makes you choose either a Shopify product or a material you make rather than buy.

### What happens to past production runs when I change a bill of materials?

Nothing happens to them. Editing supersedes the old version rather than rewriting it, and every batch stays attached to the version it used. Changing tomorrow's recipe never rewrites what yesterday actually consumed.

### Can a material be made from another material?

Yes, and Stockful follows the chain all the way down. A cookie is made of dough and dough is made of flour, so starting a batch of cookies consumes flour through the dough, and dough you already hold reduces the flour you are told to buy. A material with a bill of materials of its own shows Made here and a Start a batch action instead of a purchase order, because there is nobody to send an order to.

### What units can I use?

Kilograms, metres, litres or count, set on the material so every SKU under it converts the same way. A bill of materials can be written in whatever unit suits the recipe as long as it converts: 300 g against a kilogram-stocked material lands as 0.3 kg. Litres against a kilogram-stocked material does not convert, because that needs a density Stockful has no way to know, so the line is refused rather than guessed at.

### Does Stockful track expiry dates, lot numbers or batch traceability?

No. Materials carry stock, cost and a full movement history, but there is no shelf-life or expiry dating, no lot numbering on stock, and no traceability from a finished unit back to the delivery it came from. Expiry and shelf life are later work. If you need recall-grade traceability today, Stockful is not the tool for it.

### Does raw materials tracking cost extra?

No. Materials, bills of materials, production and material reordering are on every plan at no extra cost. Stockful prices on tracked SKUs and locations, not on your revenue and not per feature.

## Explore more

[AI Inventory Assistant](https://stockful.app/ai) [Shopify Inventory Management](https://stockful.app/shopify-inventory-management) [Shopify Inventory Tracking](https://stockful.app/shopify-inventory-tracking) [Shopify Inventory Reports](https://stockful.app/shopify-inventory-reports) [Multi-Location Inventory](https://stockful.app/shopify-multi-location-inventory) [Shopify Demand Forecasting](https://stockful.app/shopify-demand-forecasting) [Shopify Purchase Orders](https://stockful.app/shopify-purchase-orders) [ABC Analysis for Shopify](https://stockful.app/shopify-abc-analysis) [Stocky Alternative](https://stockful.app/stocky-alternative) [Migrate from Stocky](https://stockful.app/stocky-migration) [Inventory Planner Alternative](https://stockful.app/inventory-planner-alternative) [Prediko Alternative](https://stockful.app/prediko-alternative) [Stockful vs Stockie](https://stockful.app/stockful-vs-stockie)

## Move off Stocky before you have to.

Install Stockful and you start with a year of daily stock history already in place, not an empty chart. Switch with a working replacement in hand well before 31 August 2026.

[Start free trial](https://apps.shopify.com/stockful-inventory-management?utm_source=stockful-website&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=shopify-raw-materials&utm_content=bottom-cta) [See how Stockful compares→](https://stockful.app/stocky-alternative)

14-day free trial