Shopify Squarespace integration that keeps one stock count

Shopify is happy to hold a product that belongs to no collection. Squarespace isn’t: every product sits on a store page, and there’s no way to create one without naming the page it goes on. So you pick that page once in settings, and everything we publish on the Squarespace side arrives there.

Move things afterwards inside Squarespace and we won’t drag them back: the page is where a product starts, not where we hold it. If you later delete or rename that page, we stop creating, clear the setting and email you, rather than filing your products somewhere you didn’t choose.

The first read of your Squarespace catalogue takes physical products only. A digital download has no count to keep in step with anything, so leaving it out is the right default rather than a gap in the import.

Most channels are either instant or on a timer. Squarespace is both at once, and the split decides which direction you can trust to the second. It tells us the moment an order is placed, so a Squarespace sale reaches Shopify straight away. It says nothing when you edit a stock number inside Squarespace, so we go and look for that ourselves, every two minutes.

The direction that matters is already the fast one. Overselling is caused by sales, and sales are pushed to us. The two-minute wait applies to a correction you typed in yourself. You knew that number before we did, so nothing is exposed while it travels.

Which leaves one case worth planning around: a stock-take. Re-count a shelf, type the new figures into Squarespace, and for up to two minutes your other shops still hold the old ones. Fine if nothing sells in that window, and a race you didn’t need if something does. Do the counting on the Shopify side instead and there’s no window at all.

Squarespace has no idea of locations: one number per variant, and that’s the whole model. Shopify does, and plenty of sellers use them (a shop floor, a garage, a third-party warehouse), which raises a question no integration should answer on your behalf. Which of those numbers should the website show?

We don’t add them up. Adding up is the answer that sells the most and ships the least, because it puts stock on the website that’s sitting somewhere the website can’t send it from. You connect the Shopify location that actually fills Squarespace orders, and that location’s count is what Squarespace carries.

If Shopify runs a single location too, there’s nothing to decide and you’ll never meet this setting: the two are paired for you. It only appears when there’s a real choice behind it.

Most answers to this question point at Shopify’s Buy Button, and for a good number of people that is the right one. It’s a sales channel inside Shopify that hands you a block of embed code; you drop that into a Squarespace code block and your Shopify products appear on the page, with the checkout still Shopify’s. The catalogue never leaves Shopify.

Which is exactly why there is nothing to sync. One catalogue, one stock figure, one place the orders arrive. What you have built is a Squarespace page showing a Shopify shop rather than a Squarespace shop: the items aren’t in Squarespace Commerce, so its own product pages, stock screen and order history stay empty.

The other setup is two real shops: products in Squarespace Commerce holding their own stock, products in Shopify holding theirs, each taking orders through its own checkout. Now there are two numbers for one shelf, and something has to keep them level. That’s the case we’re built for, and it’s worth settling which of the two you’re in before you connect anything.